JUSTICE ROBERTS OUT OF THE HOSPITAL

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice John Roberts was released from a hospital in Maine Tuesday, a day after suffering a seizure.

Roberts, 52, plans to continue his vacation at a summer home in Maine, said Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg. Doctors found no cause for concern after evaluating Roberts, she said.

President Bush’s chief spokesman, Tony Snow, reported earlier that Roberts told Bush in a phone call that he was doing fine.
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Roberts was hospitalized after he fell on a dock near his home on Hupper Island, near Port Clyde, Maine.

Bush called Roberts Tuesday morning.

“The chief justice assured him that he was doing fine,” Snow said. “The president was reassured.”

Roberts “sounded like he was in great spirits,” Snow said, relaying details of the phone call.

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

Roberts had a similar, unexplained episode in 1993.

The White House was aware of that previous seizure when Bush nominated Roberts to the Supreme Court, Snow said.

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.

'Benign idiopathic seizure'

Doctors who evaluated Roberts on Monday said the incident was a “benign idiopathic seizure,” meaning they found no tumor, stroke or other explanation. The seizure caused Roberts to fall on a dock and he sustained minor scrapes, Arberg said.

He was kept overnight at the Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport for observation.

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.

The incident occurred around 2 p.m. on a dock near Roberts’ summer home in Port Clyde on Maine’s Hupper Island. He had just gotten off a boat and was returning home after running errands, Arberg said. Port Clyde, which is part of the town of St. George, is about 90 miles by car northeast of Portland, midway up the coast of Maine.