Bill Clinton to undergo heart surgery again today

Main Category: Cardiovascular / Cardiology
Article Date: 10 Mar 2005 - 10:00 PDT

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Bill Clinton will need a second heart operation - this one will be to remove fluid and scar tissue. Some patients who have undergone heart by-pass surgery need this second operation. Doctors say the procedure, known as decortication, is straightforward and has a very low risk of complication.

He will be operated on at New York Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Centre. Doctors advised him to have surgery after his last x-ray.

In 2004 he suffered from chest pains and breathlessness and had quadruple bypass surgery. Bill Clinton is 58 years old.

About President Bill Clinton

President Clinton was born William Jefferson Blythe IV on August 19, 1946, in Hope, Arkansas, three months after his father died in a traffic accident. When he was four years old, his mother wed Roger Clinton, of Hot Springs, Arkansas. In high school, he took the family name.

He excelled as a student and as a saxophone player and once considered becoming a professional musician. As a delegate to Boys Nation while in high school, he met President John Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. The encounter led him to enter a life of public service.

Clinton was graduated from Georgetown University and in 1968 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. He received a law degree from Yale University in 1973, and entered politics in Arkansas.

He was defeated in his campaign for Congress in Arkansas's Third District in 1974. The next year he married Hillary Rodham, a graduate of Wellesley College and Yale Law School. In 1980, Chelsea, their only child, was born.

Clinton was elected Arkansas Attorney General in 1976, and won the governorship in 1978. After losing a bid for a second term, he regained the office four years later, and served until he defeated incumbent George Bush and third party candidate Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race.

Clinton and his running mate, Tennessee's Senator Albert Gore Jr., then 44, represented a new generation in American political leadership. For the first time in 12 years both the White House and Congress were held by the same party. But that political edge was brief; the Republicans won both houses of Congress in 1994.

Written by Christian Nordqvist, Editor, Medical News Today