Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is in intensive care in hospital, it has emerged.
He was admitted to Milan's San Raffaele hospital again on Wednesday, sources said.
The media billionaire, 86, had spent some days there last week.
Local media reported that he was admitted in relation to cardiac surgery.
Berlusconi has had a series of health problems in recent years, most recently recovering from COVID-19 in 2020.
He told reporters after being discharged from a 10-day hospital stay then that disease had been "insidious" and was the most dangerous challenge he had ever faced.
He has had a pacemaker for years, underwent heart surgery to replace an aortic valve in 2016 and has overcome prostate cancer.
There was no immediate response from Berlusconi's Forza Italia party to requests for confirmation.
Berlusconi had been to San Raffaele, where his personal physician works, for a regular checkup just last week.
It comes just months after Berlusconi, who also owns Italian football team monza, promised to provide sex workers to his players after they won a game against Juventus.
At the end of last year, the scandal-attracting former lawmaker added that warmonger Vladimir Putin had sent him a crate of vodka along with a "sweet letter", leaked audio revealed.
The outspoken leader of the Forza Italia party courted controversy a month earlier when he claimed the Russian President had sought to put "decent people " in charge of Ukraine following the invasion earlier this year.
A long-time friend of Putin's, he also said he had been "pushed" into beginning the military action, which has since left thousands of civilians dead.
Now, a new audio recording released by Italian news agency LaPresse suggests the pair have exchanged gifts and letters around the time of his birthday.
In 2020, news of the poltician contracting Covid-19 was confirmed by his party and his doctor Alberto Zangrillo, head of anaesthesia at the same hospital in Milan.
In 2018, Forbes magazine ranked him as the 190th richest man in the world with a net worth of £6billion.
The 84-year-old, who owns A.C Millan, was sentenced to four years imprisonment in 2013 for tax fraud, although he was only required to carry out community service.
He was also taken to San Raffaele on June 7, 2016 with heart problems.
