LOS ANGELES -- Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg had a kidney removed after doctors found an "irregularity" during a routine physical examination, his spokesman said Monday.
Spielberg, 53, the director of such films as "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List," was back at home recuperating following the surgery performed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the filmmaker's spokesman, Marvin Levy, said."A complete recovery is promised, and no follow-up treatment is necessary," Levy said.
Neither Levy nor officials at Cedars-Sinai would give further details about the nature of the abnormality discovered on Spielberg's kidney, or when the operation was performed.
Levy also declined to say how long Spielberg was in the hospital or say which kidney was removed. "He's doing fine, I talked to him this morning. He's returning to work now -- he's looking at projects and scripts already," Levy said.
From the circumstances publicly disclosed by Levy, the filmmaker most likely was diagnosed with a small cancerous lesion on his kidney, said Dr. Mohamed El-Shahawy, a kidney specialist at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.
"That would be the most common reason for removing a kidney," El-Shahawy, the medical director of the kidney transplant program at USC, said.
"I cannot really think of any other possibility, except if somebody has a serious infection that is difficult to treat."
If detected during a routine checkup, the first sign of such an abnormality would probably have been microscopic traces of blood discovered in the patient's urine through urinalysis, El-Shahawy said.
Such a finding would lead to further tests, and, if those findings pointed to a malignancy, a biopsy of the kidney ultimately would be performed, he said.
Levy said he believed the filmmaker would be making a public appearance Saturday, as scheduled, to receive an award at the NAACP Image Awards in Pasadena and to receive a lifetime achievement award March 11 from the Directors Guild of America.