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Italy’s Berlusconi to undergo heart surgery
6:59 CAT | 09 Jun 2016
Reuters / Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi leaves the stage flanked by his girlfriend Francesca Pascale at the end of a rally to protest his tax fraud conviction, outside his palace in central Rome, Italy August 4, 2013.
Four-time Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi will undergo heart surgery by the middle of next week to replace a defective aortic valve and should make a swift recovery, his doctor said on Thursday.
The 79-year-old center-right leader and media mogul was admitted to hospital on Monday suffering from what his doctors called a “cardiac deficiency”.
“At the beginning he didn’t want to believe it,” Berlusconi’s personal doctor Alberto Zangrillo told reporters about the diagnosis. “For a man who wants to live to be 130, this is a very unpleasant jolt.”
After the news sank in, he “showed great courage and determination” and “put his complete trust in us”, Zangrillo said, adding that he should have fully recovered from the surgery within a month.
Earlier on Thursday, a spokeswoman for his Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party had denied press reports that Berlusconi, who has worn a pacemaker since he was 70, would need an operation.
Berlusconi’s once powerful center-right has become increasingly fragmented in recent years, especially since he lost his grip on power in 2011 at the height of the euro zone debt crisis.
Since then he has faced a number of legal woes and was ejected from the Senate in 2013 following a conviction for tax fraud.
Source: Reuters
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