What was Lisa Marie Presley's cause of death? A look at the 2023 death of Elvis' daughter

The unexpected death of Lisa Marie Presley on Jan. 12, 2023, was a result of "small bowel obstruction," according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.

Presley was 54 — 12 years older than her father, Elvis Presley, who died on Aug. 16, 1977 . (Elvis died of a heart attack, according to the Shelby County Medical Examiner, although later reports suggested that drug use contributed to his ill health.)

In a report issued Jan. 14, 2023, the Los Angeles County coroner's attributed the death of Lisa Marie Presley to "sequelae of small bowel obstruction." "Sequelae," as a medical term, refers to an after-effect or secondary condition. The report cited Presley's earlier "bariatric surgery" as a factor that contributed to but was not an immediate cause of death.

In Presley's case, the surgery was a gastric bypass procedure in which the size of her stomach was reduced and part of her small intestine rerouted to the smaller pouch. Performed in Dallas several years before her death, the surgery limited Lisa Marie's food and calorie intake, to enable her to lose weight.

On Jan. 12, 2023, Presley was transported from her Calabasas, California, home to nearby UCLA West Valley Medical Center, after she complained of "abdominal pain," according to the coroner's report. She was "unresponsive" by the time an ambulance arrived at her home, and she was pronounced dead at the hospital at 5:08 p.m.

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"During her hospitalization she was found to have a severely distended abdomen and diagnosed with severe metabolic acidosis" (a buildup of body toxins), the report states, defining the "obstruction" responsible for the death as a "strangulated small bowel caused by adhesions" — scar tissue — "that developed after bariatric surgery years ago."

"This is a known long term complication of this type of surgery," the report adds. "The manner of death is deemed natural."

In a side note, the autopsy report states: "Multiple tattoos are identified... The word 'Ben' is noted to the right hand." "Ben" is a reference to Lisa Marie's son, Benjamin Storm Presley Keough , who died by suicide on July 12, 2020, when he was 27.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: What was Lisa Marie Presley's cause of death? A look at the 2023 death of Elvis' daughter