9-07-04 - NEW YORK (AP) Former President Clinton has been taken off a respirator and is breathing on his own after having quadruple bypass surgery.
A member of Clinton's surgery team says everything is going "very well." The former president underwent the four-hour procedure Monday at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia.
Doctors say his arteries were so severely clogged that they posed an imminent danger of a major heart attack.
Clinton went to the hospital late last week, but doctors had to delay surgery until yesterday because he was on a blood-thinning medication, and they wanted to decrease the chance of excessive bleeding.
The hospital's chief of cardiology says Clinton's return to full health will take weeks.