Brazilian ex-president Bolsonaro’s treatment for persistent hiccups touches a nerve

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro underwent “a phrenic nerve block procedure” on Saturday to treat his persistent hiccups, his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, said on social media.The doctors treating Bolsonaro said later that they blocked the right phrenic nerve and scheduled a new procedure in 48 hours to block the left one.The phrenic nerve is described in medical literature as a vital nerve originating in the neck that controls the diaphragm, the primary muscle for breathing.“It’s been nine months of struggle and anguish with daily hiccups,” Michelle Bolsonaro said.Bolsonaro’s doctors said the procedure went well.Bolsonaro, 70, had been hospitalised on Wednesday for hernia surgery. In September, he was convicted and sentenced to 27 years in prison by Brazil’s supreme court for plotting a coup to overturn his 2022 election loss.At the request of his defence lawyers, he was authorised by supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes to leave prison for the surgery. In a statement issued while he was in the hospital, Bolsonaro endorsed the 2026 presidential bid of his son, Flavio Bolsonaro.Once discharged from the hospital, Bolsonaro will return to serving his sentence at a federal police jail in the capital.Jair Bolsonaro has faced health problems since a stabbing he suffered in September 2018, during a presidential campaign event in the town of Juiz de Fora, in Minas Gerais state.Bolsonaro underwent various surgeries in the abdominal region after the stabbing.With Reuters and Agence France-Presse