After several days of silence, during which his campaign had effectively shutdown, the doctors in Las Vegas who treated Bernie Sanders for his ‘cardiac incident’ on Tuesday night confirmed last yesterday that the Senator had a heart attack:
Bernie Sanders was hospitalized after a heart attack, his campaign announced for the first time Friday.
The 2020 Democratic hopeful’s aides revealed Wednesday that he had chest pains the previous evening and doctors had inserted two stents to address a blockage in an artery. That is a fairly common procedure, with one cardiologist calling it “mostly a nuisance” that would likely keep him hospitalized for only one or two days.
But Sanders’ staff initially revealed little information about his condition beyond the stent procedure. On Friday evening, his doctors at Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas said he was diagnosed with a heart attack after going to an outside facility and then transferred to their hospital.
“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 in the statement.
Arturo E. Marchand Jr. and Arjun Gururaj, Sanders’ physicians, said that he was stable once he arrived at Desert Springs and then immediately treated at the cardiac catheterization laboratory.
“His hospital course was uneventful with good expected progress. He was discharged with instructions to follow up with his personal physician,” they said.
Asked why the campaign did not reveal he suffered a heart attack until Friday evening, a spokesman for Sanders said “that’s the moment when the most accurate and up-to-date summary could be given by doctors.”
More from CNN:
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders suffered a heart attack, his campaign confirmed on Friday after he departed Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas.
“I want to thank the doctors, nurses, and staff at the Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center for the excellent care that they provided,” Sanders said in a statement Friday.
“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’ treating physicians — Arturo Marchand Jr., MD, and Arjun Gururaj, MD — confirmed that the senator was diagnosed with a “myocardial infarction” and had two stents placed in a blocked coronary artery, noting that “all other arteries were normal.” Myocardial infarction is the medical term for a heart attack.
They added that Sanders’ hospital stay and treatment were “uneventful with good expected progress,” and that he had been instructed “to follow up with his personal physician.”Sanders tweeted later Friday to thank his well-wishers for their continued support.
“Hello everybody! We’re in Las Vegas. I’m feeling so much better,” he said. “Thank you for all of the love and warm wishes that you sent me. See you soon on the campaign trail.”
In the accompanying video of Sanders saying nearly the same message a few hours after leaving the hospital, Sanders’ wife, Jane, added, “Thank you all so much. It really made a difference.”The senator from Vermont had experienced “chest discomfort” at a campaign event on Tuesday night, according to senior adviser Jeff Weaver.
Weaver said on Wednesday that Sanders will be “canceling his events and appearances until further notice.”
On Thursday, his campaign confirmed that he will be taking part in the next Democratic primary debate on October 15 and that he plans to return home to Vermont in the coming days before taking part in the debate.
Jane Sanders said in a statement Thursday afternoon that her husband is “up and about” and has not undergone any additional procedures” since the stent insertion.”He’s been spending the last couple of days just having a good time, talking to people, friends and family and so many well wishers that have called and his friends and then of course the well wishers that have tweeted, emailed, called, all of our phones. And we just really want to thank them,” she said.
In all honesty, this is not entirely surprising news. The suddenness of Sanders’ absence from the campaign trail, combined with the announcement that the health issue that had kept him off the trail was “cardiac-related” and had resulted in the implantation of two arterial stents to deal with a blockage near the heart brought the idea to the mind rather immediately the idea that the Senator had suffered a heart attack, albeit one mild enough that he was able to recover quickly enough to be released from the hospital within a few days and for his campaign to announce that he would be participating in the upcoming October 15th debate, although it’s unclear if he’ll be returning to the campaign trail with the same grueling schedule he had before this week.
At the same time, though, the incident does bring to mind several legitimate questions that could impact Sanders and others in the race. The most obvious one, of course, is the issue of health itself. At 78 years old, Bernie Sanders is the oldest candidate in the race and the oldest serious candidate to ever run for President. He’s followed by former Vice President Biden, who is 76 years old and will turn 77 in a month and a half, and Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is 70 years old and will be 71 next June. President Trump, meanwhile, is 73 years old and will be 74 next June. If elected, these people would be 79, 78, 71, and 74 on Inauguration Day 2020 and 83, 82, 75, and 78 respectively in 2025. Even without this incident, which raises legitimate concerns about not only Sanders’ health but that of all the candidates, the issue of health was bound to come up at some point. Now, though, I suspect it will become more urgent.
The second question it raises is the transparency of the Sanders campaign. Notwithstanding their claims, I suspect that doctors knew fairly quickly that the cardiac event that Sanders had suffered was indeed a heart attack. The first reason to believe this is the fact that there are blood tests that can be taken after such an incident to determine whether a heart attack had taken place. Additionally, the fact that the campaign moved so quickly to cancel Sanders’ campaign events indicates they knew the matter was serious. While Sanders is, of course, entitled to the same medical privacy as the rest of us he’s also a candidate for President and running at a rather advanced age. The voters need to know the state of his health, and the people around him need to know that trying to hide information like this just leads to people asking more questions.
