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CNN Live At Daybreak

Bush to Undergo Physical Examination After Pretzel Incident

Aired January 14, 2002 - 06:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush is scheduled to undergo a physical examination this morning after his fainting incident. As CNN's Jeanne Meserve reports, Mr. Bush was home at the time.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush was watching the Dolphins-Ravens game on television in a bedroom of the White House residence and eating pretzels when he fainted. He fell off a couch and suffered a scrape to his cheek and also a bruise to his lower lip. Tests were done on the president. They all came back normal. He is not any medication at this point, although the president did tell his spokesman Ari Fleischer that he was feeling a little under the weather, felt like he had a bit of a bug.

The theory of White House doctors is that a pretzel may have pressed against a nerve and lowered the president's pulse rate, causing him to faint. They say he is now doing quite well. He had some soup and salad with the First Lady and took his doctor's advice and went to bed early. Further tests will be done in the morning before a final decision is made on whether the president will travel to the Midwest as planned. Right now, the plan is to go.

I'm Jeanne Meserve in Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Didn't know a pretzel could do, could you? Well CNN Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said it could. He phoned in to give us some perspective on fainting and the heart.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You always have to be a little concerned about underlying cardiac things. They can be very, very mild and again, I want to emphasize it's nothing that people have to worry about long term, but certainly in even a small alteration heart rate or the pattern of heart beat, an arrhythmia so to speak, and can cause someone to faint if it interrupts the blood flow to the brain ever so briefly.

These are sorts of things that we see in hospitals quite a bit, and they had mentioned that they would consider monitoring his heart just to try and see if he has some underlying abnormality like that. Again, not something that you know is difficult to treat, if that's what it is. That's certainly something that they'll probably be monitoring.

COSTELLO: But right now, of course, they think it was the pretzel going down the wrong pipe and once again, that could cause -- that could cause, let's see, the president's doctor says Mr. Bush's low pulse rate could have increased his odds of fainting when the pretzel stimulated a nerve. I hope you got that.

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