Former President Bill Clinton was hospitalized Thursday in New York, where doctors inserted two stents into a clogged coronary artery after he complained of chest pains. The one-hour procedure went smoothly, according to his cardiologist, and Clinton could be released as soon as Friday. Clinton, 63, was recovering at New York Presbyterian Hospital's campus at Columbia University, the same hospital where he underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery in 2004. The former president had recurring episodes of chest pain over the past several days, a Clinton aide said, and he could have suffered a heart attack if the condition had gone untreated. Clinton's cardiologist, Alan Schwartz, said the former president would recover fully and resume his "very active lifestyle." Within two hours of the operation, Clinton was walking around his hospital room, and Schwartz said he could return Monday to his work leading the humanitarian response to the Haiti earthquake.
