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US vice president seeks medical attention for clot

US Vice President Dick Cheney, who has suffered four heart attacks, sought medical attention on Monday for a blood clot in his left leg and will have to take blood-thinning medication for months, his office said.

"The vice president experienced mild calf discomfort today. In light of his recent prolonged air travel, he visited his doctor's office" in the afternoon, spokeswoman Megan McGinn said.

"An ultrasound revealed a deep venous thrombosis [DVT] or `blood clot' in his left lower leg. His doctors will treat him with blood-thinning medication for several months. The vice president has returned to the White House to resume his schedule," McGinn said in a statement.

Cheney, 66, and the man who would lead the US if the president were incapacitated, recently logged 65 hours on an airplane on a nine-day trip to Japan, Australia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Once a heavy smoker, he has a history of coronary problems, experiencing his first heart attack in 1978 when he was only 38 -- the same year he won the first of five two-year terms in Congress representing Wyoming.

In 1988 he underwent quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery, and went on to become Secretary of Defense under president George Bush over the following four years, overseeing the US invasion of Panama and the 1991 Gulf War.

He had his fourth heart attack in 2000, the year he and President George W. Bush won election to the White House. He underwent an angioplasty weeks after being sworn in as vice president in 2001.

In September 2005 he had an operation for blood clots behind each of his knees, and then in January last year he was hospitalized for shortness of breath.

A lifelong Republican with close relations with the oil and defense industries -- he was chief executive of oil service giant and Pentagon logistics contractor Halliburton in the 1990s -- Cheney has kept up the no-nonsense image of a deep conservative and has become one of the most powerful vice presidents in memory.

A shrewd and fearsome bureaucratic infighter, Cheney has since the beginning been the Bush administration's conservative backbone.

But his name has been muddied in the trial of his former aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who is accused of lying to investigators about the leaking of a CIA operative's identity.
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