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Tuesday, January 15, 2002 - Web posted at 9:01:13 am GMT

WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush fainted and fell off a couch on Sunday evening after choking on a pretzel while watching a televised football game, but a subsequent medical examination showed he was fine, his doctor said.

A pretzel is a bread snack made out of twisted dough.

The president's physician, Air Force Colonel Richard Tubb, said Bush had complained in the last couple of days that he might be coming down with a cold.

This condition combined with his having just eaten a pretzel that he did not swallow properly caused his heart rate to slow, and as a result he fainted.

Tubb said Bush (55), who was at the White House, ended up with an abrasion on his left cheek and a small bruise on his lower lip after hitting his head on the carpeted floor when he fell off the couch.

Bush was watching the NFL playoff game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Miami Dolphins. His wife, Laura, was on the telephone in the next room.

Tubb diagnosed Bush as having a "neurally mediated syncope", which is basically a common fainting spell.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush figured he had only been unconscious for a few seconds because when he looked at his dogs, they were "both in the same position. They were looking at him funny."

"He woke up and he has an ugly scrape on his cheekm" said Fleischer.

Bush's father, then-president George Bush, collapsed with an irregular heartbeat while jogging at Camp David in 1991, which was later blamed on Graves' disease, a thyroid problem. - Nampa-Reuters

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