Washington, Jan 13: President of the United States Donald Trump is in ‘excellent health’, The White House physician said. Trump had his first medical exam as US president at Walter Reed military hospital on Friday. The exam came after a new best-selling book portrayed Trump, 71, as unfocused and childlike.
“The president is in excellent health and I look forward to briefing some of the details on Tuesday,” Jackson said in a brief statement distributed by the White House. He is expected to take questions about the results from reporters on Tuesday.
Trump boarded Marine One at the medical facility in Bethesda, Maryland, outside Washington, after about three hours at the hospital. Trump shook hands with his physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson, and then waved before boarding his helicopter.
The examination lasted for several hours and measured things like Trump’s blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, heart rate and weight. Earlier, The White House said Trump will not undergo a psychiatric exam.
The fairly routine exam for previous presidents has taken on outsized importance in the age of Trump, given the tone of some of his tweets, comments attributed to some of his close advisers and Trump’s recent slurring of words on national TV.
Some of the comments were published in a new book about Trump’s first year, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House” by Michael Wolff, which White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has denounced as “complete fantasy” for portraying her 71-year-old boss as undisciplined and in over his head as president.
Trump himself has pushed back hard against any suggestion that he’s mentally unfit, declaring himself “a very stable genius.”
Two months before the November 2016 election, Trump released a five-paragraph letter from his longtime physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, who concluded that Trump “is in excellent physical health.” A year earlier, Bornstein said in a December 2015 letter: “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
The 2016 letter put Trump’s blood pressure and cholesterol measurements in the healthy range, though he uses a cholesterol-lowering statin medication. His EKG, chest X- ray, echocardiogram and blood sugar were normal.
The 6-foot-3 Trump weighed 107 kilograms, and his body mass index, or BMI, of 29.5 put him in the category of being overweight for his height.
Trump takes Crestor for his cholesterol, a low-dose aspirin for heart attack prevention, Propecia to treat male- pattern baldness and antibiotics for rosacea. The doctor’s 2016 letter stated that Trump’s testosterone level, 441.6, was in the normal range, as were his PSA reading for prostate abnormalities and tests of his liver and thyroid.
While the exams are not mandatory, modern presidents typically undergo them regularly and release a doctor’s report declaring they are “fit for duty.”
(Inputs from PTI)