Doctors: Sanders can handle presidency
Bernie Sanders suffered “modest heart muscle damage“during his October heart attack but has since been doing well and should be able to continue campaigning for president “without limitation,“according to letters released Monday by his primary care physician and two cardiologists.
“He is currently entirely asymptomatic, his heart function is stable and wellpreserved, his blood pressure and heart rate are in optimal ranges,” wrote Martin LeWinter, attending cardiologist at University of Vermont Medical Center in Sanders’ home state.
LeWinter wrote that the 78-year-old Vermont senator continues to receive “several” medications that patients commonly take after a heart attack and that he sees “no reason” why Sanders can’t campaign as normal and handle the stress of being president, should he win next election.
“While he did suffer modest heart muscle damage, he has been doing very well since,” LeWinter wrote.
Sanders, the oldest candidate in the 2020 presidential race, had vowed to release detailed medical records by the end of the year and did so the day before New Year’s Eve.
A separate letter from Brian Monahan, the congressional attending physician in Washington, said year’s several medications that Sanders received after his heart attack, including a blood thinner and beta blocker, “were stopped based on your progress.”
“Your heart muscle strength has improved. You have never had symptoms of congestive heart failure,” Monahan wrote in a letter to Sanders.
He added that Sanders had a successful graded exercise treadmill examination monitoring heart function, muscular exertion and oxygen consumption.