President Donald Trump entered the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday for his first known physical checkup since his inauguration nearly one year ago.
The examination is being conducted by the president’s personal physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson.
“I think it is going to go very well. I would be surprised if it didn’t,” Trump told reporters the previous day.
A written statement will be released by Jackson, who is a U.S. Navy rear admiral, following the exam and the White House will conduct a full briefing about it next Tuesday, according to Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Since federal health privacy laws also cover the president, it will be up to Trump to decide what information to release.
The checkup for the 71-year-old president will not include a psychiatric evaluation, according to Sanders.
While there have been no known significant health events for Trump since his inauguration last January, concerns have been widely expressed about possible neurological disorders.
Trump, who is the oldest president to take office, in public appearances has slurred words and grasped a drinking glass with both hands.
Sanders has brushed aside concerns expressed by reporters about the president’s health as “ridiculous.”
Trump’s physical will be among the most closely scrutinized of any president in decades, perhaps since Ronald Reagan, who was wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt and also suffered from Alzheimer’s disease while in office, according to his youngest son, Ron Reagan.
The elder Reagan, however, was not diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease until 1994, five years after he left office.
Trump’s father, Fred, developed Alzheimer’s in his 80s, a fact that has prompted calls for the president to undergo a significant neurological exam.
Previous concerns
Last October, Senator Bob Corker, who is a member of the president’s Republican Party, told reporters that Trump’s behavior had raised issues about his “leadership, and just his stability, and the lack of desire to be competent on issues and understand.”
Following this month’s publication of a widely-discussed behind-the-scenes book about his first year in office, Trump on Twitter described himself as “a very stable genius” and earlier this week he allowed White House pool reporters and videographers to remain in the room for 55 minutes as he met with a group of senators with whom he was negotiating immigration legislation.
The most recent public medical information about Trump comes from his longtime personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, who in 2015 declared that his patient would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Subsequently, Bornstein revealed that Trump was prescribed a statin for high cholesterol, and takes a daily baby aspirin for heart health, an occasional antibiotic for the skin condition rosacea, and finasteride pills that promote hair growth.
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