Clinton receives two stents after suffering chest pains

FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Former President Bill Clinton had two stents inserted to prop open a clogged heart artery yesterday after suffering from chest pains, said his cardiologist, Allan Schwartz.

Clinton is scheduled to return home Friday and can resume his normal activities as early as Monday, Schwartz said last night during a news conference outside NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, the same hospital where the former president, 63, was treated in 2004.

The roughly hourlong procedure was "successful," Schwartz said, and Clinton was up and walking around after the procedure.

Tests determined that one of Clinton's four arteries was blocked, Schwartz said. Thursday's procedure was aimed at reducing Clinton's chance of suffering a future heart attack.

"The goal of the treatment, and I think it will be achieved, is for President Clinton to resume his very active lifestyle," Schwartz said. "This was not a result of either his lifestyle of his diet, which have been excellent."

Schwartz said the recent setback was part of the "natural history" of the treatment for his bypass four years earlier.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the couple's daughter, Chelsea, arrived at the hospital at about 7:30 p.m.

Stents are tiny mesh scaffolds used to keep an artery open after it is unclogged in an angioplasty procedure. Doctors thread a tube through a blood vessel in the groin to a blocked artery, inflate a balloon to flatten the clog and slide the stent into place.

That is a different treatment from what Clinton had in 2004, when clogged arteries first landed him in the hospital. He underwent quadruple bypass surgery because of four blocked arteries, some of which had squeezed almost completely shut.

Angioplasty, which usually includes placing stents, is one of the most common medical procedures done worldwide. More than half a million stents are placed each year in the United States.

With bypass or angioplasty, patients often need another procedure years down the road because arteries often reclog.

"It's not unexpected" for Clinton to need another procedure now, said Dr. Clyde Yancy, cardiologist at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas and president of the American Heart Association.

The sections of arteries and veins used to create detours around the original blockages tend to develop clogs five to 10 years after a bypass, he explained. New blockages also can develop in new areas.

"This kind of disease is progressive. It's not a one-time event, so it really points out the need for constant surveillance" and treating risk factors such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure, he said.

With Pervaiz Shallwani