Former President Arroyo returns to hospital for post-surgery check-up

MANILA, Philippines—Former president and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo visited the hospital for a post-surgery, follow-up consultation Wednesday and was told by her doctors that she needed to continue wearing her halo vest, a spokesperson of St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig City said.

Arroyo consulted her team of doctors and underwent a CT scan sometime during the day, said Marilen Lagniton, vice president for customer affairs of the hospital.

Lagniton said that the former president’s physicians had decided that the halo vest on their patient would have to “stay for another few weeks more.”

The spokesperson said that Arroyo seemed to be “doing very well even with the halo vest.”

The former president had been fitted with a halo vest to ensure her cervical spine was immobilized while she recovered from her latest surgery. Doctors are also giving her calcium supplements as she has also been diagnosed with hypoparathyroidism, or lack of parathyroid hormone.

She underwent her third major operation last August and was recently discharged from the hospital as doctors deemed that there was no need to keep her confined.

Arroyo, however, had been told by her doctors not to entertain any visitors at home while she was recovering from the surgery.