Dr. Craig R. Smith uses a model of a human heart to explain to reporters the heart bypass surgery he performed on former President Bill Clinton on Sept. 6, 2004 | Mary Altaffer/AP Photo Bill Clinton undergoes heart surgery, Sept. 6, 2004

On this day in 2004, Bill Clinton, who left the White House in 2001 after serving two terms in the presidency, underwent a four-hour quadruple bypass operation at the Columbia campus of New York Presbyterian Hospital. He was discharged four days after his procedure and he returned to his suburban home in Chappaqua, in New York’s Westchester County.

A team of surgeons led by Dr. Craig R. Smith, the hospital’s chief cardiothoracic surgeon, found extensive signs of heart disease, with blockages in some of Clinton’s arteries at well over 90 percent. The team removed two arteries from his chest and a vein from the leg and attached them to arteries serving the heart, detouring around the blockages.


Clinton, who was 58 at the time, went to the hospital a few days before the operation complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath — symptoms, as it turned out, that he already had been experiencing for several months. He initially blamed them on presidential campaign season lapses in his exercise routine and on acid reflux.

The former president also blamed his heart problems in part on genetics — his mother’s family had a history of heart disease. But he also said he “may have done some damage in those years when I was too careless about what I ate.”

Dr. W. Randolph Chitwood, chief cardiovascular surgeon at East Carolina University and a spokesman for the American College of Cardiology, said Clinton’s condition had entered a dangerous state before the operation. Dr. Allan Schwartz, the hospital’s chief of cardiology, said, however, that after Clinton recovered from the operation he could continue to lead an “extraordinarily active lifestyle.” (He had been stumping in battleground states for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who was seeking to unseat George W. Bush, Clinton’s Republican successor in the White House.)

During his presidency, Clinton was lampooned for his inability to resist fatty fast food. But he was also an enthusiastic jogger.

In a message sent through his spokesman, Clinton, his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), and their daughter, Chelsea, said: “We appreciate more than words can say all the good wishes and messages of concern that we received during this difficult time in our lives.” (They had received more than 85,000 get-well messages.)



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“Your thoughts and prayers meant so much to us, and helped keep our spirits strong,” they added. “We feel blessed to have such support, and it will continue to sustain us throughout the months of recuperation that remain ahead.”

In February 2010, Clinton underwent another heart procedure at the same New York facility where he had been operated on some six years earlier. Two stents were implanted in a coronary artery. The procedure involved inserting small metal mesh tubes into the artery to prop it open. The stents remain within his artery as scaffolding, allowing the vessel to stay open and better accommodate blood flow.

SOURCE: WWW.NYTIMES.COM