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.
I heard a clip of the President's announcement, and the people cheered his good wish for Clinton.
Thanks, jmboster. I just emailed them offering an eyewitness account from a person who was there. I wonder if they will take us up on it. We'll see.
Of course we pray for X42's full recovery. I want him around to console his wife when her political fortunes do a nosedive.
Would also like to see the MRI he had after his bike fall (according to Tony Snow), and see how the heck he was able to have MRI when he allegedly still carries shrapnel in his body. MRIs and shrapnel do not mix...
Big deal, this is no worse than they do every other day. The only way it can have life and exposure is if you get worked up over it. You should already be boycotting those media outlets, and if the circulation numbers are accurate, you probably already are.
The lie about booing has been discredited already, but shouldn't willie be getting cut up in Canada, since hillary admires the canuk health care system so much?
AP Reporter was Scott Lindlaw, previously criticized in Columbia Journalism Review for cheap shots at Bush - see Instapundit. Folks, let AP hear from you. They've got a reporter out there they know to be practising bad journalism.
Dang 97.5!
Well, there is always hope.
I doubt that cocaine had any part in this.
I had 6 bypasses at age 57, and had not and still haven't ever done marijuana, cocaine, or other such drugs.
I don't like Sick Willie, but wish him well in his surgery.
I'm really sorry to hear that Clinton is going to have a heart bypass operation. Up until this point in my life I have never had anything in common with this miscreant.
They didn't mention that --- or the fact that 4-5 years ago the media proclaimed he had the most excellent health -- I guess this was a very instant acting heart disease.
One may have had difficulty, rescued only by the context, distinguishing between a "boo" and a "Moooo"kie Wilson or Isaac "Bruuuu" chorus. I've never had trouble, however, separating "boos" from "woos" because of aforementioned pitch differences.
What's his address? I'll send him a twinkie.
The AP couldn't even report on the weather without finishing up with a dig at either Bush or Republicans in general.
The first three letters of ASSociated , says it all about the AP.
The AP reporter who wrote this needs to be outed and fired.
We all know the media is biased, but it doesn't hurt to maintin our incredulity less we risk becoming comfortable with it.
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