#8
The Times (UK)
December 17, 2001
Yeltsin to have heart surgery
FROM ROGER BOYES IN BERLIN
BORIS YELTSIN, the former Russian leader, is to undergo open-heart surgery in Berlin after complaining of chest pains, medical sources said yesterday .
The exact nature of the operation is still unclear. The former President has a history of heart trouble, including two heart attacks in 1995. The following year he underwent a quintuple bypass operation.
Mr Yeltsin, 70, is already staying at the German Heart Clinic, which is attached to Berlin’s renowned Virchow Clinic. Some 4,500 cardiac patients are operated on every year there under the supervision of Professor Roland Hetzer, Germany’s leading open-heart surgeon.
Professor Hetzer has contacts throughout Eastern Europe and within the Russian Establishment, where German heart surgery is well regarded. German doctors operated on Lenin and the tradition seems to have persisted, with many wealthy Russian patients flying to Berlin and Munich for treatment.
Professor Hetzer has also worked closely with the American cardiologist Michael DeBakey, who performed Mr Yeltsin’s bypass surgery in 1996.
Mr Yeltsin is said to be comfortable. It is not known when the surgery will take place.
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