Prague, Nov 2 (CTK) – Doctors have diagnosed popular Czech pop singer Karel Gott with a lymph node malignant tumorous disease known as Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, his spokeswoman Aneta Stolzova told CTK yesterday, adding that Gott has been treated in Prague´s General Teaching Hospital (VFN) since Sunday evening.
Doctors made the diagnose during the urgent abdominal surgery that Gott, 76, underwent in Prague´s Institute of Clinical and Experimental Medicine (IKEM) last week.
“During the surgery of his acute abdomen he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma as the cause of his [health] trouble. A targeted treatment of this disease started yesterday with the use of the state-of-the-art methods and with a team of experts cooperating in it,” Marek Trneny, head physician of the VFN 1st Internal Clinic – Hematology Clinic, said in a press release.
“At the moment, it is impossible to estimate how long the treatment will last,” Trneny said.
The clinic has asked for all moral and ethical rules to be observed in relation to both the patient and the hospital.
It would not release further information pending its decision to lift the information embargo.
“I beg all media to respect my husband´s privacy and I beg you to approach the situation sensitively and with the necessary respect, regarding his health condition and also regarding all his children,” Gott´s wife, Ivana Gottova, said.
Gott suffered from heart arrhythmia in the summer.
Last week, he cancelled some concerts after being hospitalised in IKEM.
Gott participated in a number of events in the past few weeks. Apart from several concerts, he presented a series of five CDs with his duets with Czech and foreign singers.
He said in September he was preparing another CD that should be released in two years. In would be his 289th recording in a row, including the foreign ones.
Gott, who has kept at the top of domestic pop music for half a century and also has a number of fans abroad, is the winner of 39 Golden or Czech Nightingale top pop singer prizes awarded in Czechoslovakia and in the Czech Republic. He is popular not only at home, but also abroad, mainly in Germany.
Former Czech president Vaclav Klaus decorated Gott with a state award for contribution to Czech culture in 2009.
Gott has two adult daughters by his former girl-friends. In January 2008 he married Ivana Machackova in Las Vegas. They have two daughters, born in 2006 and 2008.
