Man in fake Hugo Chavez photo is a Mexican patient

A doctor says the man in a photograph published by the Spanish newspaper El Pais that supposedly showed an ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is really a patient in Mexico.

Dr. Juan Mandujano Guajardo says he was one of the anesthesiologists intubating the man during a 2008 surgery at a Mexico City hospital that was recorded for educational purposes.

The poor-quality image showed the head of a man apparently on a hospital bed with tubes in his mouth. The Spanish newspaper apologized to its readers for the mistake and said it was investigating how the photo made its way into the paper

Mandujano says the video of the patient with a disorder called acromegaly, or gigantism, was uploaded to a medical association website and eventually made its way to YouTube.

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