From Deseret News archives:
Clinton bypass goes smoothly
No heart damage is found; his doctors expect full recovery
Dr. Craig Smith, Clinton's chief surgeon at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, said the former president's heart had suffered no damage. Clinton should have a full recovery and enjoy normal life expectancy even though some of the four arteries bypassed had "well over 90 percent blockage," Smith said.
Clinton was said to be awake, though still using a breathing tube and unable to speak, at the time of a late afternoon press conference by his surgical team.
"These past few days have been quite an emotional roller coaster for us," his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and daughter, Chelsea, said in a statement. "We are so grateful to the people of this hospital and so many others around the world who have given us their prayers. The president's optimism and faith will carry him through the difficult weeks and months ahead."
Doctors said the four-hour surgery, which began at 8 a.m., was normal in every way. "Right now, everything looks straightforward," Smith said. Clinton is expected to leave the hospital within four to five days and be fully back to normal within three months.
Dr. Allan Schwartz, chief of cardiology at the hospital, said that given the extent of Clinton's blockage there was a "substantial likelihood that he would have suffered a substantial heart attack in the near future." Doctors stopped Clinton's heart for 73 minutes and put him on a heart/lung machine, a common practice in bypass surgery.
Clinton, 58, was hospitalized Friday after suffering chest pains and shortness of breath. Smith said that it was "obvious relatively quickly that what he needed was an operation."
In a brief telephone interview Friday on CNN's "Larry King Live," Clinton blamed genetics there is a history of heart disease in his mother's family and a well-known love of unhealthy food in past years for the blockage.
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