Hillary Clinton hospitalized with blood clot

MATTHEW LEE

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton was admit­ted to a New York hos­pi­tal Sun­day after the dis­cov­ery of a blood clot stem­ming from the con­cus­sion she sus­tained ear­lier this month.

Clinton’s doc­tors dis­cov­ered the clot Sun­day while per­form­ing a follow-up exam, her spokesman, Philippe Reines, said. He would not elab­o­rate on the loca­tion of the clot but said Clin­ton is being treated with anti-coagulants and would remain at New York-Presbyterian Hos­pi­tal for at least the next 48 hours so doc­tors can mon­i­tor the medication.

“Her doc­tors will con­tinue to assess her con­di­tion, includ­ing other issues asso­ci­ated with her con­cus­sion,” Reines said in a state­ment. “They will deter­mine if any fur­ther action is required.”

Clin­ton, 65, fell and suf­fered a con­cus­sion while at home alone in mid-December as she recov­ered from a stom­ach virus that left her severely dehy­drated. The con­cus­sion was diag­nosed Dec. 13 and Clin­ton was forced to can­cel a trip to North Africa and the Mid­dle East that had been planned for the next week.

The seri­ous­ness of a blood clot “depends on where it is,” said Dr. Gho­lam Motamedi, a neu­rol­o­gist at George­town Uni­ver­sity Med­ical Cen­ter who was not involved in Clinton’s care.

Clots in the legs are a com­mon risk after some­one has been bedrid­den, as Clin­ton may have been for a time after her con­cus­sion. Those are “no big deal” and are treated with six months of blood thin­ners to allow them to dis­solve on their own and to pre­vent fur­ther clots from form­ing, he said.

A clot in a lung or the brain is more seri­ous. Lung clots, called pul­monary embolisms, can be deadly, and a clot in the brain can cause a stroke, Motamedi said.

Keep­ing Clin­ton in the hos­pi­tal for a cou­ple of days could allow doc­tors to per­form more tests to deter­mine why the clot formed, and to rule out a heart prob­lem or other con­di­tion that may have led to it, he said.

Dr. Larry Gold­stein, a neu­rol­o­gist who is direc­tor of Duke University’s stroke cen­ter, said blood can pool on the sur­face of the brain or in other areas of the brain after a con­cus­sion, but those would not be treated with blood thin­ners, as Clinton’s aide described.

Clin­ton was forced to can­cel Dec. 20 tes­ti­mony before Con­gress about a scathing report into the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplo­matic mis­sion in Beng­hazi, Libya, that killed Ambas­sador Chris Stevens and three other Amer­i­cans. The report found that seri­ous fail­ures of lead­er­ship and man­age­ment in two State Depart­ment bureaus were to blame for insuf­fi­cient secu­rity at the facil­ity. Clin­ton took respon­si­bil­ity for the inci­dent before the report was released, but she was not blamed.

Some con­ser­v­a­tive com­men­ta­tors sug­gested Clin­ton was fak­ing the seri­ous­ness of her ill­ness and con­cus­sion to avoid tes­ti­fy­ing, although State Depart­ment offi­cials vehe­mently denied that was the case.

Law­mak­ers at the hear­ings — includ­ing Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee chair­man who has been nom­i­nated by Pres­i­dent Barack Obama to suc­ceed Clin­ton — offered her their best wishes.

Last Thurs­day, before the dis­cov­ery of the blood clot, Reines said Clin­ton was expected to return to work this week.

The for­mer first lady and sen­a­tor, who had always planned to step down as America’s top diplo­mat in Jan­u­ary, is known for her gru­el­ing travel sched­ule. She is the most trav­eled sec­re­tary of state in his­tory, hav­ing vis­ited 112 coun­tries while in the job.

Clin­ton is con­sid­ered a front-runner for the Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion in 2016, although she has not announced plans to run.

Posted by AP News on Dec 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.