President Will Have Cyst on His Finger Removed Today

WASHINGTON —  President Bush will undergo a minor operation today to remove a cyst on the middle finger of his right hand, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said Thursday.

The spokesman said that “clinical observation” by the President’s physicians indicated that the mucoid cyst is benign. Although a biopsy will be performed on the tissue after it is removed, mucus-filled sacs, by definition, are not malignant, physicians said.

The surgery, which Bush called “a little tiny operation,” will be performed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington under a local anesthetic that numbs the entire finger. Fitzwater said that while the growth has been present for three years, “it simply has reached a point where it has gotten larger and noticeable in (the President’s) daily activities, and so he’d like to have it removed.”

Causes Some Anxiety

“It’s not really painful, but it’s a nuisance in the sense that it is large enough to cause him some anxiety,” the spokesman said.

He described the procedure as routine, and said that it would be performed at the hospital rather than in the White House physician’s office, because “it does require anesthetic, it requires an incision . . . and it will require stitches.”

Besides, he said, “you never know . . . what it takes to get it out of there once you get in.”

The cyst is positioned between the fingernail and the upper joint. Bush is expected to be in and out of the hospital within an hour.

The location of the growth was the subject of good-natured teasing Thursday when Bush posed for photographs at the start of a meeting with Jonas Savimbi, a leader of the Angolan resistance group, UNITA.

When a reporter asked him to “show us which one hurts,” the President laughed and replied: “Don’t tempt me! Come on, it is this finger--this middle one.”

He then pointed his ailing finger downward.

“This finger is sometimes identified with a bad gesture in the United States,” he explained to Savimbi.

Bush also joked that “I have to undergo a serious operation. I will show you my scar afterwards.”

The procedure to remove the cyst commonly involves making an incision, spreading the skin around the growth, tying the sac at its roots in the joint, snipping it off and then sewing up the incision, according to Dr. John Reeves, a dermatologist at UC San Francisco.

Other, less invasive, treatments involve draining the sac and injecting cortisone, or giving the patient sterile needles to drain the sac himself several times over a period of weeks.

Reeves said that the growth, which occurs more often in older people, is rarely painful, although it can sometimes produce pressure or discomfort.

The surgery will be performed by Dr. Allen Smith, a colonel in the Army Medical Corps and chief of hand surgery at Walter Reed, and by Dr. George Bogumill, chief of hand surgery at Georgetown University Hospital. The anesthetic will be administered by Dr. Charles Gandy, an Army lieutenant colonel stationed at Walter Reed.

After the surgery, Bush plans to fly by helicopter to Camp David, Md., for the three-day Columbus Day holiday. On Sunday, he will leave the presidential retreat to speak to the National Federation of Republican Women, meeting in Baltimore.