Former 'Dance Moms' Star Abby Lee Miller Has Emergency Surgery

PITTSBURGH, PA - Former “Dance Moms” star and Pittsburgh native Abby Lee Miller nearly died from an unusual spinal infection that required emergency surgery.

The surgeon who performed the operation offered no guarantee that Miller would be able to walk again. But People reported that Miller has regained feeling throughout her body and is able to move her arms.

“All you can do is pray and, as a surgeon, you maximize everything you can for the spinal cord to recover itself,” orthopedic spine surgeon Dr. Hoorman Melamed told the magazine. “I am hopeful.”

In March, Miller was transferred to a halfway house from a federal prison, where she was serving a 366-day sentence for bankruptcy fraud and other charges.

Miller hid $775,000 worth of income while claiming to be bankrupt and brought $120,000 in Australian currency into the U.S. without reporting it.
Miller filed for bankruptcy after defaulting on mortgages at the Abby Lee Dance Company studio in Penn Hills and a Florida condominium.

Melamed’s surgery on Miller lasted five hours and involved removing the back part of several vertebrae to relieve pressure on her spinal cord. He did not know what caused her condition to fail so rapidly but said of the operation “If we didn’t do something, she was going to die. Her blood pressure was bottoming out.”

Miller appeared in the popular Lifetime reality show from its 2011 debut until quitting the program last year. The show, which dealt with Miller's attempts to instruct young female dancers while getting into near-constant confrontations with their mothers, initially focused on Miller's Penn Hills studio.

Photo via Getty Images.

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