it never ends in your place. what? misread a cue card. he was the first guest to welcome back letterman after heart surgery. good to have the big man back, isn t it? reporter: when regis came back from his own bypass surgery, letterman was his first guest. soon they were baring their legs to show off their bypass grafts, and at 79, regis doesn t look or act his age. you make me feel so spring as sprung reporter: regis holds the guinness world record for the most time spent in front of these, tv cameras. joey bishop s sidekick in the 60s. any special significance? no, it s a thing, man. that s his thing. well, i m glad he s finally gotten one. reporter: now, more than four decades later, recommendations lis stop doing his thing, his
you got to be who you are and nothing he s done will keep him from going on at this pace. he s one of those piece that doesn t seem to need a great deal of sleep or rest. sanjay, how is it possible my understanding is that an artery was blocked after having the surgery in 2004. how does it from the time it s cleared in 2004, how does it become fully blocked already? what happens in 2004 is they did bypass grafts. they went around it? yeah. you have a blockage, and instead of addressing it they bypass it it with a vein taken from the leg. it s that that become blocked. why does that happen? if you re eating right ander and sizing, is it just genetics? part of it is a vein is not as good as an artery. about 50% of people have significant blockages within ten years of veins. in this case it really had nothing to do with ohio tie yet
the others, this is a classic case, isn t it, of a thing well done? reporter: yeah. i mean today first of all, larry, let me say i m glad you re doing well. you didn t share that with me, but i m glad to hear that the procedure you had a few weeks ago, you re feeling well. that s good news. this does happen and as dr. isom and dr. schwartz both pointed out this has more to do with the natural history of his heart disease. he had this bypass operation six years ago. i know a lot of people have had bypass operations they ve done well for 20, 30 years. sometimes you get blockages that occur in those bypass grafts and in this case they decided we re going to leave the bypass graft alone. we re going to open up the artery that was blocked in the first place. that s what they did today and sounds like it went very well for him. larry: david gergen, do you think he might slow down? well, thank goodness he s doing as well as he is. larry, i actually think he might. he s been living a r
of his bypass grafts. i don t think stress played a big role. larry: paul begala, do you expect him to bounce right back? absolutely. i saw dr. schwartz say he was allowed to go back into office by monday. try to stop him. you talked to him about it so many times. the work he does with childhood obesity, the work he does in africa with hiv/aids. haiti, where he has a 35-year commitment. he and president bush raised millions of dollars. sanjay is down there helping a lot of them. they don t have the kind of health care president clinton has. i know, i know he would want folks to do that. if you re concerned about him, he s going to be fine. say a prayer and maybe send another dollar or two to the people in haiti at clintonfoundation.org. larry: his popularity still remains quite high, doesn t it? it certainly does, larry. people have seen he has not only
what happened in 2004, they actually did bypass grafts. they just went around it? essentially like you have a blockage. instead of addressing that blockage, we ll just bypass it with a different, in this case a vein taken from the leg. it s that that became blocked. that bypass graft became blocked. why does that happen? if you re eating right and if you re exercising, is it just genetic? part of it is a vein is not as good as an artery. look at all the data. 50% of people do have significant blockages within ten years of veins. this case they thought it had nothing to do with his diet. cholesterol was fine, well managed. they say he was exercising well. they don t think the stress of his job had anything to do with it either. it just happens sometimes. what s interesting is they didn t go after the bypass graft. they went after the artery that was blocked in the first place and opened that up with two stents today. that s why he s feeling better. has more blood flow to his h