NEW YORK, Sept 10 (AFP) - Former US president Bill Clinton left hospital on Friday, four days after receiving a quadruple bypass that doctors said had averted a major heart attack.
Clinton was discharged from New York Presbyterian Hospital and returned to his home in Chappaqua, New York, where he was recuperating with his family, Clinton's office said in a statement.
"The president is in good spirits and has taken short walks in the hospital hallway and in his home today," it said.
In a joint message from Clinton, his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, and their daughter, Chelsea, the former first family voiced thanks for the tens of thousands of get-well messages they had received over the past four days.
"Your thoughts and prayers meant so much to us, and helped keep our spirits strong," the message said. "We feel blessed to have such support, and it will continue to sustain us throughout the months of recuperation that remain ahead."
Clinton, 58, was hospitalized a week ago complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath.
Several of the former president's main blood vessels were found to have a blockage of more than 90 percent, and doctors said the surgery had come just in time to ward off a major heart attack.
Doctors have told Clinton, whose love of junk food is well known, that he will have to carefully watch his diet in future.
Clinton's heart was stopped for 73 minutes during the operation, a now-common but still delicate procedure, which bypasses blocked arteries so that blood can flow properly.
Some 300,000 bypass operations are performed in the United States every year, with a success rate of around 99 percent.
Full recovery should take several months, possibly sidelining Clinton for the remainder of the US presidential campaign in which he had planned to stump extensively for Democratic challenger John Kerry.
Clinton has remained a force in his party after serving in office between 1993 and 2001, and is the only Democrat to have won the White House since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
A seasoned and extremely effective campaigner, the former president was kept away from the stump in 2000 by Al Gore, who believed his scandal-tarnished former boss would be a liability.
The Kerry campaign signalled a different approach by giving Clinton a keynote speaking slot at the Democratic convention in Boston in July.