Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an ‘aggressive’ cancer – but it’s not the first health issue the former president has had to face. Here we take a look at some of his past health issues
Former US President Joe Biden has revealed he has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer after a stay in hospital last week. The 82-year-old has grade 5 prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.
Biden was admitted to hospital last week for the investigation of a “prostate nodule”, news which, at the time, raised few eyebrows as doctors planned to conduct “further evaluation”. Now, he is considering the best treatment for his diagnosis.
However, it’s not the first time the former president has been plagued by illness. Here, we take a look at some of his other health woes.
In March 2023, the White House announced that Biden had undergone a procedure to remove a common type of skin cancer from his chest. Dr. Kevin O’Connor, a former U.S. Army physician who treats the 82-year-old, said at a press conference at the time that there had been a biopsy that “confirmed that the small lesion” removed from the then-president “was basal cell carcinoma”.
“All cancerous tissue was successfully removed. The area around the biopsy site was treated presumptively with electrodessication and curettage at the time of biopsy. No further treatment is required,” O’Connor said, as reported by the Independent.
Biden battled COVID twice during his term as president, once in 2022 and a second time in July 2024. The latter was just days before he stood down from his re-election bid after a concerning debate against Donald Trump. He also broke his food during his presidency, which happened while playing with one of his German Shepherd dogs.
In 1980, Biden had suffered a near-death experience that required him to undergo brain surgery two times within five months. He shared his experience at a Jerusalem hospital during a February 2023 visit to Israel.
“I was making a speech and I had a terrible headache — this was years ago — and I did a very stupid thing: I got on an aircraft and I flew home. It turned out I had two cranial aneurysms, and I got rushed to a hospital in the middle of a snowstorm for a nine-and-a-half-hour operation that saved my life,” he recalled, describing the February 1988 trip to Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, then in Northwest Washington, DC.
He shared how shortly after the speech, he had passed out at the University of Rochester. In his 2007 memoir titled Promises to Keep, he shared how he felt “lightning flashing inside my head, a powerful electrical surge — and then a rip of pain like I’d never felt before”.
At Walter Reed, he was told he needed surgery, with only a 50-50 chance he’d live through the procedure. “Maybe I should have been frightened at this point, but I felt calm,” he wrote. “In fact, I felt becalmed, like I was floating gently in the wide-open sea. It surprised me, but I had no real fear of dying. I’d long since accepted the fact that life’s guarantees don’t include a fair shake,” he added.
Biden survived the life-saving surgery, and three months later, he underwent a similar procedure to fix another, smaller aneurysm on the opposite side from the first.
A senator at the time of the operation, Biden then made a last-minute request of the surgeon, Dr Neal Kassell, as he was being wheeled in for the procedure. Dr Kassell recalled: “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Doc, do a good job, because someday I’m going to be president.”
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