Yeltsin in stable condition after hip surgery

Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin was in stable condition today following hip surgery, Russian news agencies quoted doctors as saying.

Yeltsin fell on Wednesday while holidaying on the Italian island of Sardinia and returned to Moscow immediately after initial treatment in an Italian hospital. Doctors yesterday performed a hip operation and pronounced the surgery successful.

“He is getting better, he’s already sitting up in bed,” the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Valery Zolotov, the chief doctor of the elite presidential hospital complex as saying.

“His condition is stable. All indicators are stable.”

Zolotov said yesterday that Yeltsin would spend another day in intensive care and then be transferred to a regular ward.

“I believe we will make him walk (today), and during the next week he will be able to move independently,” he said.

Zolotov and other doctors at the clinic could not be reached independently for comment.

Italian paramedics said Yeltsin broke his femur, or thigh bone.

There is a high death rate among people over 65 who need surgery after breaking a femur, doctors say.

The ensuing lack of mobility during recovery also can produce its own host of complications, including possible blood clots, surgical wound infections and pneumonia, he said.

One of the most notable patients who had hip surgery after breaking a thigh bone was Pope John Paul II, who fell in his bathroom in 1994.

Yeltsin, Russia’s first elected president after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, has kept a low profile since resigning on December 31, 1999.