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updated 12:49 p.m. ET July 28, 2007

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday had minor surgery to receive a new battery for an implanted device that monitors his heart rhythms, his spokeswoman said.

“The device was successfully replaced without complication,” Megan McGinn, the vice president’s deputy press secretary.

Cheney, who has a history of heart problems, arrived with his wife, Lynne, in the morning for the procedure at George Washington University Hospital, and walked out about four hours later. Cheney returned to his home at the Naval Observatory and then resumed his normal schedule, McGinn said.

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Doctors replaced the generator and battery part of the heart defibrillator. That device monitors Cheney’s heart and would deliver an electric shock to reset the heart to normal rhythm if the heart ever goes out of rhythm.

Doctors did not replace wires that are attached to the device and are threaded through Cheney’s heart. That would have required a much more extensive operation.