Costa Rican ex-President Óscar Arias hospitalized for pacemaker adjustment

UPDATE, Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, 5:34 p.m.: Óscar Arias was discharged from the hospital at 3:30 p.m. on Monday. “Dr. Oscar Arias was discharged in excellent condition,” Clínica Bíbilica Medical Director Jorge Cortés said in a press release. “He was prescribed rest and subsequent checkups.”  

Original story continues here:

Costa Rica’s two-term president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Óscar Arias Sánchez, 74, was admitted to the Clínica Biblica Hospital in downtown San José in the early hours Saturday to undergo a pacemaker adjustment. Doctors had implanted the pacemaker last Wednesday.

The hospital’s director, Jorge Cortés, said, “The cardiac pacemaker needs to be calibrated during follow-up checkups after it is implanted, and we decided to hospitalize him [Arias]. He is in stable condition.”

Arias, who was president in 1986-1990 and again from 2006-2010, is asthmatic, and currently is recovering from surgery on his right foot last May following a tendon rupture.

Cortés on Monday morning said doctors are waiting for test results to determine if they will discharge the former president.

On his Facebook and Twitter profiles, Arias sent messages saying he is in good condition. On Sunday, he posted two photographs taken with Indian-American writer, lecturer and physician Deepak Chopra, who visited him at the hospital.

Chopra is in Costa Rica to lecture on Monday and had agreed to meet with Arias for lunch on Saturday at the ex-president’s home. Instead, he went to the hospital for the visit.