Comatose former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was on Monday transferred out of intensive care, where he had been taken due to a new deterioration in his health, the hospital treating him said.
"Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was transferred this morning back to the Sheba Medical Center department of respiratory rehabilitation, after spending three days in intensive care," a hospital statement said.
"His heart function has improved after being treated for an infection, and his overall condition has stabilised," it added, without elaborating.
The Tel Aviv hospital announced on Friday that Sharon, who has been in a deep coma for 10 months following a massive stroke in January, had been transferred to its intensive care unit "due to a weakening of his condition".
The former statesman, who oversaw Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 following a 38-year occupation of the Palestinian territory, dramatically disappeared from public life after his huge brain haemorrhage.
Sharon, who was elected premier in early 2001, was moved from a Jerusalem hospital in May to the Tel Hashomer facility on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, for long-term treatment.
His collapse marked a dramatic career end for the former general who had been on course for re-election amid big opinion poll leads for the centrist Kadima party he had formed just two months before being taken ill.
Sharon was succeeded by his close ally Ehud Olmert, who led Kadima to a less than convincing victory in a March election.