The family of singer Natalie Cole, who died in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve at the age of 65, revealed on Thursday that she died from a combination of heart failure and lung disease.
Natalie Cole was diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension, a rare lung disease, in 2009 after undergoing a kidney transplant. A statement released by Cole’s family points to complications from this progressive illness as the cause of the heart failure.
This is a very serious and progressive disorder. [She] responded well to PAH-specific agents over many years, during which she performed many concerts world-wide, but eventually succumbed to intractable right heart failure, an outcome that unfortunately commonly occurs in this progressive disorder, despite modern therapies.
PAH causes shortness of breath, dizziness, and sometimes chest pain, and was not the only health problem that Natalie Cole suffered from. She was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 2008. In her autobiography, released in 2000, she detailed her lifelong substance abuse problems, and prior to her kidney transplant in 2009, she had undergone chemotherapy.
Natalie Cole was the daughter of jazz singer Nat King Cole, famous for songs such as L-O-V-E, but became a star in her own right. The iconic R&B and jazz singer won 9 Grammys over the course of her career, which started in the mid-1970s. She released such hits as “This Will Be,” “Unforgettable,” and “Inseparable,” and had a number of platinum albums among her extensive discography, including 1977’s Unpredictable and 1991’s Unforgettable… With Love.
Cole has made several cameos in popular television shows in the last decade, appearing in Grey’s Anatomy in 2006, The Real Housewives of Miami and The Real Housewives of New York City in 2011, and as a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2012.
Cole was still performing live, though she cancelled several tour dates in December and a February concert.
