Former President Bill Clinton was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday for an infection, according to a spokesperson, but is recovering and is expected to be released from the hospital soon.
“On Tuesday, President Clinton was admitted to UCI Medical Center to receive treatment for a non-COVID-related infection,” Angel Ureña, spokesperson for Clinton, said in a statement Thursday.
“He is on the mend, in good spirits and is incredibly thankful to the doctors, nurses, and staff providing him with excellent care.”
Dr. Imran Ali, a physician fellow at Mt. Sinai Health, told ABC’s World News Now his sources said Clinton “was feeling rather fatigued at a private event in California, and he went to the hospital and they did a routine checkup in the emergency department and they identified an infection of his blood.”
That is usually done through a blood culture, he said, adding that Clinton “probably likely had a urinary tract infection that caused the infection to go to the blood, and it’s something that we call sepsis, is when an infection reaches the bloodstream.”
In some cases, Ali said sepsis can be serious, but in other cases it can be easily controlled with IV antibiotics. He said it can be more serious for older adults, especially people with a history of heart disease.
“And I’ve treated patients who have had heart disease and sepsis and we’re concerned about a decrease in blood pressure, and we also need to monitor the heart because the heart can be infected by the infection as well,” Ali said.
“But since President Clinton is about to be transitioned to oral antibiotics, it is less likely that the infection has affected his heart, because in that case you would be on antibiotics for six weeks, through the IV line.”
Clinton has had a number of health issues over the past two decades, though most related to heart problems.
He had a quadruple bypass surgery in September 2004 and two coronary stents placed in his heart in February 2010. He also underwent surgery for a collapsed lung in 2005.
Via Reuters and ABC News
