Kennedy leaves hospital after tumour diagnosis

Veteran US senator Edward Kennedy is being released from hospital, one day after being diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour that experts say is almost certainly fatal.

Doctors said today the liberal Massachusetts Democrat “has recovered remarkably quickly” from a biopsy conducted after he suffered a seizure last weekend at his home on Cape Cod.

The doctors say he will await further test results and treatment options while convalescing at his home.

Mr Kennedy has been treated at Massachusetts General Hospital for what doctors now say is a malignant glioma in his left parietal lobe.

Malignant gliomas are diagnosed in about 9,000 Americans a year; in general, half of all patients die within a year.

Doctors discovered the tumour after the 76-year-old senator – and sole surviving son of America’s most famous political family – suffered the seizure.