Former US president Bill Clinton is recovering today from a quadruple heart bypass operation to relieve severely clogged arteries that had put him in danger of a major heart attack.
Mr Clinton is expected to make a full recovery, but doctors said he was fortunate to have checked himself into the New York hospital when he did.
The heart disease they repaired was extensive and blockage in several of Mr Clinton's arteries was "well over 90 per cent", said Dr Craig Smith, the surgeon who led the operation.
"There was a substantial likelihood that he would have had a substantial heart attack," said Dr Allan Schwartz, chief of cardiology at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Dr Smith said Mr Clinton could leave the hospital in four or five days.
The four-hour surgery came three days after Mr Clinton arrived at the hospital complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath. But doctors said Mr Clinton's problems were not as sudden as had been portrayed.
He had suffered shortness of breath and tightness in his chest for several months, blaming them on off-and-on exercising and acid reflux, his doctors said.
In addition, the former president had high blood pressure and may not have been adequately treated for high cholesterol. His doctors said yesterday he was put on a cholesterol-lowering drug a few days ago. Mr Clinton was prescribed cholesterol medicine in 2001 as he was leaving office.
In bypass surgery, doctors remove one or more blood vessels from elsewhere in the body - in Mr Clinton's case, two arteries from the chest and a vein from the leg - and attach them to arteries serving the heart, detouring blood around blockages.
During the operation, Mr Clinton's heart was stopped and he was put on a heart-lung machine for 73 minutes. That process, used for more than 75 per cent of bypass patients, carries a small risk of stroke and neurological complications.
Mr Clinton had planned to campaign for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president, but the recovery from surgery will take him off the stump - at least for now - with just two months left until the election.