What goes into checking a President’s health check up?

If President Donald Trump were any other 71-year-old – enrolled in Medicare and having his annual wellness visit – he’d be checked on his cognitive functions and feasible safety risks. However when the president applies to his physical examination Friday, the White House said his mental fitness will not be tested. And there is no guarantee that the general public would discover out the outcomes of cognitive checks if Trump were to consider them.

White Home deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said such checks are not part of the president’s prepared physical. “He’s razor-sharp as a tack. He’s a workhorse, and he needs his personnel be the same manner,” he informed reporters aboard Air flow Force One.

Trump’s check out to Walter Reed Hospital, where he’ll undergo his initial physical as president, continues an extended tradition of presidents finding semi-regular check-ups to be able to reassure the public. The newest physical exam of a president, performed in February 2016 on then-President Barack Obama, was a typical battery of measurements and blood function that revealed that Obama experienced “improved lean muscle mass” and reduced his cholesterol rate since his previous examination in 2014.

However the White House is neither required to perform a regular physical exam of the president, nor necessary to release all of the details unless the president consents. The examination also might not include Medicare’s standard electric battery of wellness testing, which are created for Americans age group 66 and older, and look for dangers like depression and other neurological complications. When asked whether Trump could have “a psychiatric check,” Gidley responded no, but declined to elaborate.

That opens a political loophole because presidents and the ones who seek any office have an inherent curiosity in keeping their most troubling medical information key – a risk that Trump himself tried to exploit through the 2016 advertising campaign, repeatedly questioning whether challenger Hillary Clinton had the “stamina” to serve as president. Clinton, dealing with an episode of pneumonia, had stumbled departing a 9/11 ceremony, providing rise to conspiracy theories about her health. Presidents for many years, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan, have hidden their personal medical ailments, from partial paralysis to painkiller dependence on signs of dementia.

“The things that we’d want to know will be the things, unfortunately, that individuals won’t need to reveal,” Connie Mariano, the White House physician to three presidents, told POLITICO in 2016. Mariano mentioned that mental illness, for example, can be regarded as disqualifying – a concern that’s emerged as lawmakers and independent psychiatrists possess raised questions about Trump’s state of mind.

Trump is slated to end up being screened Fri by Ronny Jackson, the state doctor to the president and Navy back admiral who have also administered physicals to Obama. Jackson, a 23-12 months Navy serviceman, also worked well as a White colored House physician during the George W. Bush administration and today leads the White Home Medical Unit, a round-the-clock group of specialists that are offered to the president.

Trump’s longtime personal doctor is Harold Bornstein, the brand new York City-based gastroenterologist who all famously proclaimed through the 2016 presidential campaign that Trump would be “the healthiest person ever elected to the presidency.”

Caplan said that the White colored House’s traditional decision to get screened by military personnel in Walter Reed provides president more control than likely to a private organization, such as for example Mayo Clinic or the Cleveland Clinic. “Remember, it is the commander in chief becoming examined by energetic military doctors. He’s even more in control,” Caplan said. Gleam privacy benefit with military staff: “They know they must not be blabbing to reporters” – unlike Bornstein, who’s repeatedly given interviews about Trump’s health.

The president’s physical exam will be familiar to any American who’s had an annual check-up: The physician typically steps indicators like resting heart rate and blood circulation pressure, reviews the president’s medications and draws bloodstream for further testing. Trump’s doctors have previously stated that he requires a statin to regulate cholesterol, antibiotics for Rosacea and Propecia to take care of male-pattern baldness.

Source: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/08/donald-trump-medical-doctor-health-269759