Sen. Bernie Sanders suffered a heart attack earlier this week before a stent procedure was conducted to clear an artery, doctors said Friday in a statement released by his presidential campaign.
Sanders, 78, who was released from a Las Vegas hospital Friday, experienced chest pains at a Tuesday campaign event. Doctors found a blockage in one artery.
“Sen. Sanders was diagnosed with a myocardial infarction,” his treating physicians, Arturo E. Marchand Jr. and Arjun Gururaj, said in the statement Friday.
The independent Vermont senator, dressed in a blue button-down shirt and a dark blazer, waved to cameras as he departed the hospital Friday afternoon alongside his wife, Jane. He told reporters he felt “great, thank you” before entering a dark SUV.
The statement, released after Sanders left the hospital, marked the first time the campaign had acknowledged he had a heart attack. Aides had previously declined to answer questions about his diagnosis.
On Wednesday, his campaign said he was hospitalized after experiencing chest pains at a Tuesday campaign event. After doctors discovered an artery blockage, the campaign said then, they inserted two stents.
“The Senator was stable upon arrival and taken immediately to the cardiac catheterization laboratory, at which time two stents were placed in a blocked coronary artery in a timely fashion,” his doctors said Friday. “All other arteries were normal.”
They said his hospital stay was “uneventful with good expected progress. He was discharged with instructions to follow up with his personal physician.”
Sanders is expected to return home to Vermont by Sunday and plans to participate in the Oct. 15 Democratic debate, according to a Thursday statement from Jane Sanders. It was not clear whether they would fly home on Friday.
It also remained unclear whether Sanders would resume normal campaign activities before the debate. Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser, said Wednesday that Sanders had canceled appearances “until further notice.”
Jane Sanders said the senator would “take a few days to rest, but he’s ready to get back out there and is looking forward to the October debate.”
In the statement released by his campaign, Sanders expressed the same sentiment and thanked the doctors and nurses who treated him.
“After two and a half days in the hospital, I feel great, and after taking a short time off, I look forward to getting back to work,” Sanders said.
Sanders’s medical crisis occurred amid some good news for his campaign — an announcement this week that he raised $25.3 million, more than any other candidate for the Democratic nomination, in the third quarter. In recent weeks, Sanders has slipped in the polls, dropping behind former vice president Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Heart attack led to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s hospitalization
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- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Franklin D. Roosevelt