Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has once again found himself on the operating table—this time to address complications stemming from the 2018 knife attack that nearly took his life. On Sunday, doctors at Brasília’s DF Star Hospital performed an exploratory laparotomy to tackle a partial intestinal blockage and repair his abdominal wall.
This marks the sixth surgery directly linked to that violent episode, and the ninth time Bolsonaro has been hospitalized as a result. According to the medical team, the procedure was necessary to remove intestinal adhesions—internal scar tissue—that had led to a painful “sub-obstruction” in his digestive tract, interfering with the normal passage of gas and waste.
Bolsonaro began feeling abdominal pain late last week while attending a campaign event in Rio Grande do Norte. Initially treated at a hospital in Santa Cruz, he was later airlifted to Natal. By Saturday, his condition prompted a transfer to the capital aboard a medical aircraft, where surgeons ultimately intervened the following day.
Health scares like this have become something of a grim routine for the former president. Over the past few years, he’s made multiple hospital visits for both monitoring and emergency treatment—spending extended stretches under observation, including nearly two weeks last year in a São Paulo clinic.
For Bolsonaro, the physical aftermath of that 2018 attack continues to cast a long shadow, even as he remains active in the political scene. Whether this latest surgery offers a lasting fix or is merely another chapter in a long medical saga remains to be seen.
