The prime minister was released with a routine heart monitor for continued observation as a precaution, after undergoing a full battery of tests.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was released from the hospital Sunday afternoon “in excellent condition” after his emergency room visit and overnight stay.
Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer released a statement saying that Netanyahu had “completed a series of tests and is in excellent condition. Our diagnosis, at the end of all the tests performed, including the laboratory tests, is that the reason for the hospitalization is dehydration. His heart is completely normal, without any findings.”
News reports had been aflutter since it leaked that the 72-year-old Israeli leader had been taken to the cardiology department, since the usual treatment for dehydration is a simple intravenous infusion of liquids.
Physician and 103FM commentator Prof. Rafi Carraso told the station Sunday that he didn’t know what exactly happened to Netanyahu, “but symptoms of dehydration appear quite quickly, it’s not like it takes 24 hours…. If I see a patient in the hospital due to dehydration and two hours later he comes to talk to me, I would expect him to be connected to an IV.”
This may have been a reference to a video clip the prime minister had released explaining that he had not worn a hat or drunk water during his mini-vacation, which was “not smart,” and urging everyone with a smile to do what he had not done, and “have a very good week.”
It was unclear at what point in his hospitalization he had made the video. An IV treatment usually takes at most a few hours.
The hospital statement explained the prime minister’s brief appearance in Cardiology.
Among the “comprehensive and routine tests” the prime minister had successfully undergone “while fully conscious” was “an electrical test of the heart,” whose result was completely normal, the hospital added. “At no point was any heart rhythm disorder diagnosed.”
Dr. Carraso mentioned that “in certain cases, dehydration can also lead to heart arrythmia… and tests must be performed, because maybe it’s not dehydration, or perhaps it’s dehydration plus plus plus. This is a man who works under a huge amount of stress,” he pointed out, “for long hours.”
As a matter of “routine follow-up,” Tel Hashomer added, the doctors inserted a heart monitor under the skin, called a holter, “as is customary in such situations, to enable the prime minister’s professional medical staff to continue monitoring” him.
Initial reports claimed that Netanyahu had fainted at home Saturday and hit his head.
Netanyahu’s office merely stated that “the Prime Minister spent yesterday in the Sea of Galilee during the heat. Today, he complained of slight dizziness and on the recommendation of his personal physician, Dr. Zvi Berkowitz, he came to the Sheba Medical Center’s emergency room” where doctors recommended that he “undergo additional routine tests.”
The reason he had been put in the Cardiology Department, the office added in a later statement, was because “it had a VIP room there.”