Washington — Vice President Dick Cheney underwent surgery Monday to reopen a partially blocked artery after checking into a hospital with chest pains. It was the same artery that had been cleared in November after his fourth heart attack.
There was no evidence that Cheney had suffered another heart attack, said his cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner. The doctor also said he did not believe Cheney had suffered more heart damage, though the vice president was spending the night at the hospital for observation.
Cheney, 60, had quickly resumed a full schedule after a heart attack and follow-up surgery in November.
"There is a very high likelihood he can finish out his term in his fully vigorous capacity," the doctor said after Monday's procedure an angioplasty. But he added, "He has chronic heart and artery disease."
Reiner said there was a 40 percent risk the artery would narrow again. He said Cheney could be released from the hospital as early as today and be back to work this week.
President Bush, playing down his top adviser's latest health scare, called the surgery "a precautionary measure." Bush spoke by telephone to Cheney, who reported from the hospital that he was feeling fine and looking forward to returning to work, the White House said.
Cheney is an unusually active and influential vice president. He headed Bush's transition team, played a major role in Cabinet and top personnel selections and has helped Bush forge foreign policy as well as a national energy policy. White House officials say Cheney is the adviser Bush most relies upon to make sure his agenda is carried out.
His hospitalization came less than a week after the president's first address to Congress, just as Bush is trying to generate attention and support for his tax-cut plan.
Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer said there was no word on when Cheney will return to work. "That'll be a judgment the vice president will make with his doctors," he said.
Cheney checked himself into George Washington University Hospital, about six blocks west of the White House, after feeling chest pain Saturday and Sunday and then again, twice, Monday, Reiner said.
He said the episodes were "much milder and very brief" compared with the chest pains that Cheney suffered in November. "The symptoms were subtle" this time, Reiner said.
Cheney attended a birthday party for Federal reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Sunday night, capping a weekend in which he and his wife moved into the vice president's residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory.
In the angioplasty, doctors inserted a flexible tube into the narrowed artery carrying a collapsed balloon. Once the balloon was in place, it was inflated, reopening the artery.
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