Good news for Cheney in annual checkup

Vice President Dick Cheney got good news Saturday from doctors who said his heart was beating normally for a 67-year-old man who has had four heart attacks.

“The vice president’s cardiac status remains stable,” Cheney press secretary Megan Mitchell said after the nearly two-hour annual checkup.

Doctors at George Washington University Hospital gave Cheney a physical exam and an electrocardiogram, which is a test that detects and records the electrical activity of the heart, Mitchell said. They also took images of stents that were placed in arteries in the back of his knees when Cheney underwent surgery in September 2005 to repair an arterial aneurysm.

Last year’s checkup was not so good for the vice president, who has had quadruple bypass surgery and two artery-clearing angioplasties.