Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas underwent on Wednesday a heart procedure in an Amman hospital in Jordan, and he is recovering well, a senior Palestinian official said on Thursday morning.
Tayyeb Abdul Rahim, Abbas’ top aide, said the President was taken to the hospital after he complained of fatigue. He underwent angioplasty, a procedure to check and clean the blood vessels for any possible narrowing clogging, Abdel Rahim said.
Completing his length tour, during which he visited the three continents, Abbas is expected back to Palestine on Thursday as the procedure was successful.
The acting Palestinian chief of mission in Amman, Ata Khairy, said Abbas underwent a brief checkup on a heart procedure that he had several years ago.
The president is not known to have a history of heart ailment, however, some Palestinian officials said he has high blood pressure and had battled cancer for a while and eye ailment.
However, since elected president last January succeeding the late President Yasser Arafat, Abbas appeared to be in a good health and had never canceled or postponed meetings for health problems.
Abbas is scheduled to meet with Sharon on June 21. If it happened, this meeting will be their first encounter since Sharm Al-Sheikh summit on February 8. Sharm summit could have ended four years of blood shed had Israel committed to the terms agreed upon.
Angioplasty is a common procedure in which a tiny balloon is threaded through the body into the heart and then inflated in a partially clogged coronary artery, flattening the plaque along the artery walls and restoring circulation. It is often combined with stenting, in which tiny mesh tubes are threaded into arteries to keep the blood flowing smoothly.
Apparently, Abbas did not need any stenting, since he was checked out of the hospital very soon.
