I’d like to say Bernie Sanders could become our first bionic president, because it sounds cool...but no, the stents just make his system work normally, they won’t give him comic book powers!
The stents in Sanders’s artery allow proper blood flow to the heart and restore the energy level he’s accustomed to.
Unlike Steve Austin’s exotic bionics, the technology inside Bernie Sanders is common nowadays; every year about a million Americans have a stent inserted. The procedure, which is done by catheterization rather than surgery,
is "routine" and "relatively safe," said Dr. Laurence Epstein, the system director of electrophysiology at Northwell Health in Manhasset, New York, who is not involved with Sanders' care. "This is not really heart surgery in the way that people think of [it]," he said. … Decades ago, treating coronary artery disease meant having to open up a person's chest and bypass the blocked artery altogether, Epstein said. … Now, doctors can insert a stent instead. "The stents these days are coated with a drug that prevents the body tissues from growing [over the wire mesh] and causing re-blockages," added Dr. Sripal Bangalore, an interventional cardiologist and professor of medicine at NYU Langone Health, who was not involved in Sanders' care. … "There's plenty of people that have stents that live for years and years and years," and the procedure often doesn't interfere with them doing their jobs, Epstein said. If treated aggressively, he added, the plaques can even shrink, and the condition can be reversed.
Any health scare is scary by definition, but to put this in perspective, compare the health scare presidential candidate Sanders had to the one President Reagan had in 1981:
Reagan was shot, coughed up “bright, frothy blood,” had a broken rib, a punctured lung, and serious internal bleeding. According to Dr. Joseph Giordano, the physician who headed his trauma team, Reagan was “close to death” in the emergency room. It required 5 pints of blood to stabilize him so he could be operated on. Surgeons opened his chest, sutured his lung and removed a blood clot and the bullet. He was discharged after spending 12 nights in the hospital.
Sanders had chest pain due to lack of blood flow through a blocked artery which caused a heart attack — meaning heart muscle tissue died from being deprived of blood. The doctors who treated him said Sanders was “stable upon arrival” at the hospital. He had two stents inserted into his artery, by means of a catheter, to restore normal blood flow to his heart. Tests determined all other arteries were clear. He was discharged after 3 nights in the hospital and was instructed to follow up with his personal physician.
All health scares are scary, but realistically they aren’t all equally scary.
Sanders didn’t require surgery, was up and about quickly, and while obviously his condition needs to be routinely monitored, with his energy renewed his health scare may make little difference in his ability to wage a spirited campaign and, if elected, to perform the duties of the presidency.
Prospective Democratic primary voters who had already dismissed Sanders as too old, will, no doubt, continue to feel that way and others may now be more receptive to that argument. Since he is one among a number of popular candidates in the nomination contest, winning the nomination was never going to be an easy task. Though his road to the nomination may be steeper now, I think it’s when a candidate faces tough challenges that voters really get a chance to see their mettle.
Godspeed to him — and to all our candidates!