Chief justice leaves hospital after scare

updated 7:57 p.m. ET July 31, 2007

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice John Roberts walked out of a hospital in Maine Tuesday, released a day after he suffered a seizure. The White House said he told President Bush he was doing fine.

Roberts strode briskly out of the Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport, Maine, wearing a blue sport coat, open collar shirt and slacks. He waved to onlookers before getting into a waiting sports utility vehicle for a short trip to a dock, where he then took a pontoon boat to his summer home on Hupper Island, near Port Clyde, Maine.

Roberts had no response when a reporter hollered, “How are you feeling?”

The chief justice, 52, plans to continue his summer vacation, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said. She said that doctors found no cause for concern after evaluating Roberts.

Roberts was hospitalized after he fell on a dock near his home on Monday. He had a prior unexplained seizure in 1993. Bush had called Roberts earlier Tuesday, and press secretary Tony Snow said the president was assured the chief justice was doing well.

Snow said that Roberts “sounded like he was in great spirits.”

Doctors who examined Roberts after his seizure said they found no tumor, stroke or any other explanation for the episode.

NBC News video Discussing seizures July 31: NBC health editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman talks with TODAY's Matt Lauer about Chief Justice John Roberts' seizure. Today show

Roberts told the White House of his previous seizure when Bush nominated him to the nation’s highest court and “it was taken into consideration,” Snow said. Roberts also had physical exams which were forwarded to relevant members of Congress. “He was very open about it,” Snow said.

The spokesman did not know whether outside experts were consulted or whether Bush himself was informed at the time, but said it was determined that Roberts had a clean bill of health and was competent to serve.

Two Senate Judiciary Committee aides who were involved in Roberts’ confirmation hearing in 2005 said the committee was aware of a previous seizure whose cause was never diagnosed. The sources would not say whether Roberts disclosed that he took any medication as a result. Such health information is often provided to the panel in private briefings, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Likely to relapse
By definition, someone who has had more than one seizure without any other cause is determined to have epilepsy, said Dr. Marc Schlosberg, a Washington Hospital Center neurologist who is not involved in the Roberts case.

Whether Roberts will need anti-seizure medications to prevent another is something he and his doctor will have to decide. But after two seizures, the likelihood of another at some point is greater than 60 percent.

Epilepsy is merely a term for a seizure disorder, but it is a loaded term because it makes people think of lots of seizures, cautioned Dr. Edward Mkrdichian, a neurosurgeon at the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch.

Still, Mkrdichian said anyone who has had two otherwise unexplained seizures is at high risk for a third, and that he puts such patients on anti-seizure medications.

“Having two seizures so many years apart without any known culprit is going to be very difficult to figure out,” agreed Dr. Max Lee of the Milwaukee Neurological Institute.

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