President Bush's doctors pronounced him in excellent health after a checkup that focused on his heart at the National Naval Medical Center here today, clearing the way for him to run for re-election next year.
No restrictions have been placed on the 67-year-old President, other than that he take a baby aspirin and a thyroid pill each day, said Dr. Burton J. Lee 3d, Mr. Bush's personal physician.
At a news conference Dr. Lee said there was "no reason whatsoever" for Mr. Bush not to seek another term. "He has an extremely normal heart," Dr. Lee said, adding that the President had performed exceptionally well in stress tests at the hospital and in tests conducted while he was running last weekend at Camp David.
Dr. Lee and three other doctors treating Mr. Bush also said he was completely recovered from Graves' disease, a thyroid ailment that caused an erratic heartbeat when the President was jogging in May. The erratic heartbeat, atrial fibrillation, put Mr. Bush in the hospital for two days. After he returned to the White House, the doctors determined that he had an overactive thyroid.
Today, Mr. Bush stopped taking an anti-coagulant drug, Coumadin, that he was using to prevent blood clots that could have formed as a result of the erratic heartbeat. A month ago he stopped taking two heart drugs, digoxin and procainamide, that were prescribed to prevent a recurrence of the atrial fibrillation.
Doctors said they had imposed no dietary or other restrictions on the President.
Doctors corrected Mr. Bush's overactive thyroid by destroying it with radioactive iodine treatments in May. He now takes a thyroid hormone in pill form for the hormone no longer made by the gland.
The President has not developed double vision or other eye problems like those encountered by his wife, Barbara, who was diagnosed as having Graves' disease about a year before her husband. But Dr. Kenneth Burman, an Army colonel and thyroid expert, said he could not rule out the possibility that Mr. Bush would develop eye problems, though he considered it unlikely.
The fact that the President and his wife developed Graves' disease within a year, a medical rarity, "suggests a relationship," Dr. Lee said. But he said doctors did not know what it might be. Data to Be Used in Study
Graves' disease is an autoimmune disorder, and some experts studying the case are intrigued by the fact that Millie, the family dog, also has an autoimmune disease, lupus. Dr. Lee said that data about the President's and Mrs. Bush's health are being entered into an epidemiological study being done by the National Institutes of Health here.
Dr. Bruce K. Lloyd 3d, a Navy captain who is chief of cardiology at the Naval Hospital, and Dr. Alan Ross, chief cardiologist at George Washington University Hospital, said a number of tests showed that Mr. Bush had exceptionally good heart function for his age.
The tests showed no evidence of recurrence of the atrial fibrillation. An echocardiogram, or ultrasound test of the heart, showed no evidence of damage to the heart muscle or valves.
Some doctors had criticized as excessive the length of time that Mr. Bush has been taking heart and anticoagulant drugs. But his doctors said that they wanted to reduce the drugs gradually and that his travel and vacation schedule precluded doing it earlier.