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Operation to Reagan successful
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FORMER President Ronald Reagan, 89, underwent successful surgery on Saturday to repair his right hip, broken in a fall at his home, but his rehabilitation might be complicated by Alzheimer's disease, his doctor said.
Dr Kevin Ehrhart, who headed the team that performed the hour-long operation at St John's Medical Centre in Santa Monica, called the procedure a success and said Reagan could be discharged within 10 days and walking again -- although with the help of a walker -- in about two weeks.
But Ehrhart said that the president's Alzheimer's, diagnosed in 1994, five years after he left the White House, presented a challenge to his rehabilitation.
"I am sure it will complicate it somewhat more. It's a bigger challenge but one that is not uncommon in orthopedics," he said.
He added that the main risks that people of Reagan's age and condition faced in their recuperation were heart failure and pneumonia.
Following Reagan family policy, neither the hospital nor the former president's chief of staff, Joanne Drake, would take questions about the extent of damage that the degenerative disease has inflicted on him. People who have seen Reagan as Alzheimer's took its toll have said he could not remember them or his presidency.
Reagan fell at his home in the exclusive Bel-Air section of Los Angeles on Friday just after lunchtime and was taken to the hospital in pain.
Ehrhart said the former president's condition was stable and his chances of recovery were helped by his having the "tissue, especially the muscle and bone, of a much younger man".
He added that a large metal screw and plate had been inserted in the femur -- the major bone in the leg -- along with several smaller screws in what he described as an ordinary operation without complications.
Nancy Reagan was with him all day on Friday and Saturday but stayed in another room during the operation. She has been the former president's primary caretaker since his diagnosis with Alzheimer's, sheltering him in their Bel-Air home.
Reagan survived a 1981 assassination attempt that put a bullet near his heart, a 1985 colon cancer operation and 1987 prostate and skin-cancer surgery.
(SD-Agencies)
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