JERUSALEM, Jan. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- Doctors treating Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon have concealed his real health condition following his first stroke, local newspaper Ha'aretz reported on Tuesday.

   Sharon was suffering from cardiac and cerebral diseases that doctors kept from the public since he suffered from the first stroke on Dec. 18, 2005, said the report.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, seen here in January 2005 (AFP/File)

   The general medical condition of the 77-year-old was more critical than his doctors and advisers have revealed, the report added.

   Sharon, still unconscious, remains in critical but stable condition on Tuesday, the 20th day following a major stroke and massive cerebral hemorrhaging on Jan. 4.

   After Sharon's hospitalization for the first stroke, his doctors declared that the prime minister had a hole in the septa between the heart chambers, a defect since his childhood.

   However, Ha'aretz said that Sharon also suffered from more serious, life-threatening heart problems, including a large aneurysm in the septum.

   This is known to be a source of cerebral blood embolisms and indeed led to the blood clot that caused Sharon's first stroke, said the paper.

   The daily pointed out that Sharon also suffered from other heart diseases, including a shunt that causes blood to flow spontaneously through the hole in the septum from right to left, the wrong direction which is dangerous, and other conditions in the cardiac septum.

   Those conditions created further risks of blood clots that could wind up in the brain, according to the report.

   However, Yael Bossem-Levy, spokeswoman of Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital where Sharon is being treated, dismissed the Ha'aretz report as containing nothing new.

   "Everything that appears in the item was discussed at the news conference", where the hole in the septum was disclosed, she said.

   Sharon, who turns 78 in February, has been declared temporarily incapacitated and Ehud Olmert, his longtime close ally, is now serving as acting prime minister, presumably till the March 28 general elections. Enditem