Berlusconi hospitalized in Monaco after heart problem

By Giada Zampano

ROME (AA) - Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been hospitalized in Monaco after suffering a cardiac problem while he was in his French residence, his doctor said on Thursday.

"I ordered the hospitalization in Monaco because I did not think it was prudent to transfer him back to Italy," Berlusconi’s personal doctor Alberto Zangrillo told Italian news agency ANSA, specifying that his patient had “an arrhythmical cardiac problem.”

Berlusconi was staying in southern France, near Nice, where he also spent part of the lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic last year.

Zangrillo said he urgently went there on Monday, due to “a worsening" in Berlusconi’s conditions.

Earlier on Thursday sources at his Forza Italia party told ANSA that Berlusconi was undergoing regular checks in Monaco and would have been back home “in a few days.”

The 84-years-old three-time premier and media mogul, who underwent surgery in 2016 to have an aortic valve replaced, was also hospitalized in Milan for COVID-19 in September.

When he left the hospital at the time, he said that was "the most dangerous and frightening experience" of his life.