See John McCain's medical records

John McCain released 1,173 pages of medical documents yesterday to prove that at the age of 71 – having survived war wounds, torture by the Vietnamese and three bouts of melanoma – he is fit to be president.

The verdict on the Republican nominee-in-waiting is that he appears to be in good, if not perfect, health. Doctors said that he has a strong heart and, despite having skin lesions removed as recently as February, there is a reduced risk of him dying from cancer.

Mr McCain’s most serious brush with the disease was eight years ago when surgery on an invasive melanoma and the removal of lymph nodes left him with scars down the left side of his face.

Stuart Lessin, a cancer specialist who has examined him, said that the chances of melanoma returning in the same spot were less than 10 per cent. “He’s pretty much out of the woods,” he added.

The diagnosis of a malignant brain tumour in Edward Kennedy, 76, has refocused attention on the health of politicians.

Mr McCain, who will turn 72 in August, would be the oldest president elected in American history. His personal physician said that the Senator’s performance in a heart test suggested that he was “considerably younger than his chronologic age”. John Eckstein added that there was nothing that would preclude Mr McCain from fulfilling all his responsibilities as president.

Aides acknowledge that age will be an issue in a potential general election against Barack Obama, who is 25 years younger and maintains his svelte figure with daily basketball work-outs. The Democrat hopeful campaigns on a platform of generational change which, he promises, can heal the bitter divisions in American society that opened up 40 years ago over race and the Vietnam war.

Mr McCain, by contrast, is a gnarled Vietnam veteran who uses that conflict as a reference point for much of his political philosophy. His body carries the scars of being shot down over Hanoi in 1967 when he broke his arms and his right leg. He was twice stabbed by a bayonet, had his shoulder smashed by a rifle butt and was beaten by a mob.

Those injuries, as well as torture suffered during his five-year imprisonment, has left him unable to raise his arms above shoulder level. He also routinely wears a baseball cap and high factor sunscreen to protect himself from skin cancer, and sometimes appears physically frail in public after gruelling 16-hour days on the campaign trail.

The disclosures show that he takes regular medication for cholesterol and kidney stones, sometimes uses sleeping pills, suffers from degenerative arthritis and occasional dizzy spells.

Mr McCain has sought to make light of his age and health, appearing in a television advertisment with his robust 96-year-old mother and telling the Saturday Night Live comedy show: “What should we be looking for in our next president? Certainly, someone who is very, very, very old.”

About 30 per cent of voters have said that they would hesitate to elect a man of his age to the White House.

Mr Obama never misses an opportunity to pay tribute to the long service of Mr McCain in the military and the Senate, before explaining why America must move on from the old ways of Washington.

Mr McCain has responded by offering his own faint praise of Mr Obama. He said: “For a young man of very little experience he has done very well.”

The sensitivity to the age issue was best illustrated recently when the Republicans issued a stinging response to Mr Obama’s suggestion that Mr McCain was “losing his bearings”.

Mark Salter, the Republican chief adviser, said this was a “not particularly clever” reference to age, which jarred with Mr Obama’s claims to represent a wholesome “new brand of politics”.

During his presidential run eight years ago Mr McCain responded to a whispering campaign about his mental health by releasing psychiatric records showing that he had only an “overdeveloped super-ego”, not exceptional among those vying to be the most powerful man on Earth. Yesterday’s documents included no such assessment, but doctors made a point of saying that Mr McCain, known for his fiery temper, was a pleasant patient with a high tolerance for pain.

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