Former President Bill Clinton underwent successful quadruple heart bypass surgery at a New York City hospital Monday and was expected to be able to maintain an "extraordinarily active lifestyle" in the future, his surgical team said.

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."

Spokesman Jim Kennedy said Clinton had received more than 30,000 get-well wishes via e-mail to the Clinton Foundation's Web site through Sunday evening. Clinton also got calls of concern and encouragement from President Bush, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and Vice President Dick Cheney, who has had four heart attacks and underwent similar surgery in 1988.

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.

Since leaving the White House, Clinton has been thinner and seemingly healthier than he has been in decades as a result of a rigorous workout regime and a modified version of the South Beach diet, which limits carbohydrates and fats. His doctors said his ongoing treatment would include medication and a strict new diet.