Former US president Ronald Reagan is recovering in hospital tonight after surgeons operated on his right hip, broken in a fall at his home the previous evening.
Reagan, who turns 90 next month, was taken to hospital after the accident in his home in the upscale Los Angeles suburb of Bel Air.
Reagan's wife Nancy was said to be by the former president's side since his accident. Doctors called a news conference to give further details of the operation, which was expected to consist of inserting a metal pin to stabilize the bone.
Reagan was US president from 1981 to 1989.
He retreated from public life after revealing in November 1994 that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He has been living in seclusion since then.
A hip fracture is "a very serious problem," for someone of Reagan's advanced age and general state of health, Dr. Bruce Hensel told Los Angeles television station KNBC.
His Alzheimer's disease could further complicate the former president's rehabilitation, experts say.
Due to Alzheimer's, Reagan's memories of his time as president, and his ability to recognize family and friends, have been slipping away fast. By 1998, Nancy was the only person Reagan always recognized, according to a report in Vanity Fairmagazine.
A year ago Reagan's 60-year-old daughter Maureen Reagan wrote in a Newsweekarticle that her father's motor and verbal skills were deteriorating.
"There was a time when he would enjoy the pictures in an art book and would read out loud" but the disease had "robbed him of his ability to put his thoughts into words," she wrote, appealing for more funds for Alzheimer's research.
AFP