Chief Justice Roberts leaves hospital in Maine, a day after seizure

WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts walked out of a hospital in Maine Tuesday, released a day after he suffered a seizure. The White House said he told President Bush he was doing fine.

Roberts strode briskly out of the Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport, Maine, wearing a blue sport coat, open collar shirt and slacks. He waved to onlookers before getting into a waiting sports utility vehicle.

The chief justice, 52, plans to continue his summer vacation, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. She said that doctors found no cause for concern after evaluating Roberts.

Roberts was hospitalized after he fell on a dock near his summer home on Hupper Island, near Port Clyde, Maine. He had a prior unexplained seizure in 1993. Bush had called Roberts earlier Tuesday, and press secretary Tony Snow said that the president was assured the chief justice was doing well.

Snow said that Roberts "sounded like he was in great spirits."

Doctors who examined Roberts after his seizure said they found no tumor, stroke or any other explanation for the episode.

Snow told reporters that the White House had been aware of the previous seizure when Bush nominated Roberts to the nation's highest court. The seizure did not prevent Roberts from getting a clean bill of health at the time, recalled a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid pre-empting the expected release of more details by the White House.

By definition, someone who has had more than one seizure without any other cause is determined to have epilepsy, said Dr. Marc Schlosberg, a Washington Hospital Center neurologist who is not involved in the Roberts case.

Whether Roberts will need anti-seizure medications to prevent another is something he and his doctor will have to decide. But after two seizures, the likelihood of another at some point is greater than 60 percent.

Epilepsy is merely a term for a seizure disorder, but it is a loaded term because it makes people think of lots of seizures, cautioned Dr. Edward Mkrdichian, a neurosurgeon at the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch.

Still, Mkrdichian said anyone who has had two otherwise unexplained seizures is at high risk for a third, and that he puts such patients on anti-seizure medications.

"Having two seizures so many years apart without any known culprit is going to be very difficult to figure out," agreed Dr. Max Lee of the Milwaukee Neurological Institute.