Posted on 09/03/2004 5:31:21 PM PDT by MaineRepublic
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Former President Bill Clinton, whose appetite for fast food and fluctuating waistline cemented his pudgy persona with the public, will undergo heart bypass surgery as early as Saturday in a New York hospital because of heavy blockages of his arteries.
Clinton's prospects are good for a full recovery from a surgery that's performed on more than 300,000 people each year with a 97.6 percent survival rate. The several hours of surgery will involve taking other arteries or veins and rerouting blood away from blocked areas and into the heart.
Clinton, 58, who suffered "mild chest pain and shortness of breath" Thursday afternoon, went to Northern Westchester Hospital and, after tests, was sent home later that night, according to a statement from the former president's office in Harlem. After more tests at Westchester on Friday morning, Clinton was transferred to New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan for upcoming surgery.
"He's in excellent hands and he's at one of the great hospitals in the world," his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said Friday at the New York State Fair in Syracuse as she left to be with the former president and their daughter Chelsea at the hospital.
The hospital and the former president's office aren't releasing details of the surgery, which reportedly is being planned as a quadruple bypass.
The former president is relatively young for the surgery, experts said, which means he has a better than average chance of undergoing surgery without complications and resuming a normal life. More than half of the nation's bypass surgeries are performed on people 65 and older.
"Once you get the grafts on you, you're good to go. Essentially you've got a re-load on the shotgun," said Dr. Randolph Chitwood, the chief of cardiothoracic surgery at East Carolina University's School of Medicine, who underwent bypass surgery when he was 47. "I consider I was recharged and ready to go again."
The surgery is much like installing new plumbing, Chitwood said. It involves putting inch-long patches of arteries or veins from elsewhere - legs, arms or elsewhere in the chest - around the blockages. Most of the time, the patient's heart is stopped during the operation, but for patients older than Clinton is, doctors sometimes do the surgery while the heart continues to beat, Chitwood said.
The procedure is relatively rare for men Clinton's age. Only 5 of 1,000 men aged 45 to 64 had bypass surgery in 2001, according to statistics kept by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On average, the surgery cost about $61,000 in 2001. The government pays ex-presidents' medical bills.
Bypass surgery generally isn't done unless 75 percent of an artery is blocked, said Dr. George Sopko, a cardiologist at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md.
The fact that the surgery is scheduled and not done on an emergency basis is a good sign, said Dr. Luca Vricella, a cardiac surgeon and professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
However, Vricella said the fact that Clinton is getting bypass surgery instead of less invasive procedures - angioplasty or stents such as Vice President Dick Cheney - means the blockage is too extensive or too complicated to be fixed with stents or a balloon inserted through arteries.
"Quadruple bypass means you have a multiple vessel disease, a pretty advanced disease," Sopko told Knight Ridder.
A number of factors, including weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and genetics, cause arterial blockages, the doctors said.
Clinton in January 2001 was put on a cholesterol-lowering prescription because of elevated "bad" cholesterol of 177, up from 134, Dr. Connie Mariano, the president's personal physician, told reporters in a briefing three-and-a-half years ago. Recent studies indicate ideally that number should be in the 60-to-70 range, Sopko said Friday.
Mariano said she talked to Clinton about his cholesterol levels and said the president "acknowledges that it's a combination of not the right type of diet, food that's on the road and long hours, and also not enough exercise."
Clinton, who's lost weight since he left the White House, often talked about being on the trendy South Beach Diet. But on Wednesday, the former president was seen in New Orleans eating gumbo, catfish, black-eyed peas and fried beignets - fried sugared donuts - during his book tour.
Chitwood said he doubted that weight was an issue for Clinton's artery disease.
"I don't think the president is really obese, he's kind of chunky," Chitwood said.
Clinton left office weighing 214 pounds, which is considered overweight for someone 6-foot, 2-inches tall, according to the federal government.
Both President Bush and his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, wished the former president well during campaign appearances. Some in Bush's audience booed when he wished Clinton well, while those in Kerry's cheered.
Of course if the shrapnel consists of rice pellets, MRI would not effect it.
Except that isn't what the article said...
Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them. AP
I'm talking about this article, the one posted.
Both President Bush and his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, wished the former president well during campaign appearances. Some in Bush's audience booed when he wished Clinton well, while those in Kerry's cheered.
Both President Bush and his Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, wished the former president well during campaign appearances. Some in Bush's audience booed when he wished Clinton well, while those in Kerry's cheered.
Thank you for saying this. It really upset me that some posters in another thread took his misfortune as an opportunity to bash him.
We need to be better than that.
My apologies, the snip of an article I posted was another AP one that had been posted on the DUmmies board. they're not a very discerning group over there. Interestingly, most seem to blame Christians for the nonexistent boos. Guess their real hatred is coming out.
LOL!
Evan Thomas, grandson of:
LOL! I think I just used up 30 seconds of my alotted 15 minutes of fame.
And I see we have Norman Thomas to credit for his role in helping found the ACLU.
Oh yea how about cigar abuse?
I turned 55 today and had triple by-pass on the 16 th of aug.
Everything going well and the only pain i have had to speak of is in the leg where the doc took the vein.
I wish him no ill health, I hope he comes through the surgery fine.
My dad who a quadrople said the same thing.
These reporters are doing their best to steal the election for Kerry. There are as dishonest as the reporters for Al-Jazeera and just as damaging for the false information they knowingly spread.
More than one.
sborenstein@krwashington.com
My e-mail got bounced. Either he has changed his addy or shut off his e-mail.
I'll next try his boss, John Walcott, Washington Bureau Chief of KR. His addy is supposedly: jwalcott@krwashington.com
Damn, it just struck me. If this is the John Walcott that I used to see at one of the magazines - maybe U.S. News and World Report, I knew his father, Henry, on Cape Cod.
I didn't think Clinton HAD a heart.
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