WASHINGTON (AFP) - Former Polish president and Nobel peace laureate Lech Walesa was discharged Tuesday from a clinic in Texas, four days after doctors fitted him with a pacemaker, hospital officials said.
"It has been a long time since I have felt this good," Walesa said before leaving the Debakey Heart and Vascular Center in Houston for Mexico, where he is due to attend a youth conference.
While it is common for patients in the United States to be wheeled out of hospitals after they are discharged, 64-year-old Walesa "walked out of the clinic on his own, in a nice suit," Erin Fairchild, a spokeswoman for the hospital, told AFP.
Walesa hailed the surgical team, led by electrophysiologist Miguel Valderrabano, that implanted the bi-ventricular pacemaker defibrillator in a two-hour procedure on Friday.
"This is a very good outcome and I am overjoyed that I do not need a heart transplant at this time," Walesa said as he left the clinic.
"To other people with heart problems, I suggest they get their hearts checked by physicians in a good medical center.
"The world is a beautiful place and I want everyone to live in it as long as possible and help other people, like I have been helped here," he said.
The pacemaker defibrillator is "designed to resynchronize the contractions of his heart and improve its function," Valderrabano said after the operation on Friday.
"We expect that the pacemaker, combined with the other treatments Mr Walesa has received, may lead to a very substantial improvement in how he feels, even to the point of normalization of his heart function ... and help him get back to his busy and productive life," Valderrabano said.
Days before the device was fitted, doctors at the DeBakey clinic had implanted a stent in Walesa to unblock a coronary artery.
In 2006, he underwent surgery in Italy to "repair a blood vessel that was a bit crooked," his son, Polish lawmaker Jaroslaw, told AFP at the time.
Walesa rose to global fame in 1980 when he helped lead a massive strike by workers at the Gdansk shipyard in northern Poland, which led to the creation of the first free trade union in the communist bloc, Solidarity.
He won the Nobel peace prize in 1983 for his part in founding Solidarity, which has been credited with helping to peacefully bring down the Iron Curtain, which divided Europe into communist East and free West for more than 40 years following World War II.
In 1990, the son of a carpenter became Polands first democratically elected president, and served one five-year term.
His trademark handlebar moustache whitened by time, Walesa is still as outspoken as he was during the Solidarity days and retains a dry sense of humor.
He has referred to Polish President Lech Kaczynski as an "imbecile", and brushed off the threatened lawsuits that his comments provoked.
Ten days before he had his pacemaker fitted, Walesa commented wrily at the slowness with which long-time leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro, was letting go of power in the island communist state.
"If Castro keeps handing over power at this pace, he wont actually give it up for 200 years," Walesa said.
Walesa lives in Gdansk, where he heads a foundation that bears his name, and travels the world to address conferences.
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