Bill Clinton to have follow-up surgery

NEW YORK - Former President Bill Clinton will undergo a relatively low-risk operation this week to remove scar tissue and fluid that has built up since his heart surgery last year, doctors said.

Physicians at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where Clinton had quadruple bypass heart surgery in September, said the procedure was scheduled for Thursday. They expected him to spend three to 10 days in the hospital and make a full recovery.

"I'm doing great," Clinton, 58, said as he and former President Bush visited the State Department in Washington for some tsunami-related meetings.

At the White House later to meet with President Bush, Clinton added, "I feel fine ... It's a routine sort of deal... no big deal."

"I'm in good shape," he said.

The two former presidents traveled across Asia to review aid operations following the disaster in the region. Clinton said he and the elder Bush planned to play golf Wednesday in a tournament to raise money for tsunami victims.

"Shows how sick he is," the current president quipped.

The doctors said Clinton's activities had not contributed to his need for the surgery, which was elective. They said scar tissue and fluid caused some compression on Clinton's left lung that left him short of breath and in some discomfort during exercise.

"Before he took his trip we were aware of this," said Dr. Allan Schwartz, chief of the hospital's division of cardiology, at a news conference.

Clinton, who served eight years in the White House from 1993 until 2001, had noticed symptoms while walking four miles a day as part of his exercise regimen, doctors said. He had trouble breathing on steep hills and also felt discomfort in his left chest, they said.

Doctors said the procedure, called a decortication, was rarely done as a follow-up to bypass surgery. It requires general anesthesia.

Dr. Craig Smith, chief of the hospital's division of cardio-thoracic surgery, said in some 6,000 cases of surgery like Clinton's, he had seen only 10 cases that required the follow-up surgery.

UNUSUAL PROCEDURE

"This is the extremely unusual end result of an extremely common process," he said.

Schwartz added that the procedure was "not an emergency."

Another member of Clinton's medical team, Dr. Joshua Sonett, called it a "relatively low-risk procedure." Clinton recently passed a stress test "with flying colours," doctors said.

Clinton had planned to campaign last year for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry but his plans were interrupted by his surgery. He returned to help stump for Kerry in October.

At the time of his first heart surgery, doctors said Clinton would have risked a "substantial" heart attack without surgery because some of his arteries were 90 per cent blocked.

- REUTERS