Brazil hospital expects to discharge presidential candidate Gomes Wednesday

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian presidential candidate Ciro Gomes, who sits third in polls, is doing well and should be discharged later on Wednesday if his "good clinical condition continues," the Sao Paulo hospital treating him said in a statement.

"Ciro Gomes was admitted yesterday evening ... with spontaneous urinary bleeding, related to a benign growth in his prostate," Sao Paulo's Sirio-Libanes hospital said in a statement. "He underwent a minor surgical operation to cauterize the hemorrhaging areas."

The hospital added that Gomes "should be discharged today" and that "new evaluations may be needed to avoid the recurrence of similar episodes."

The center-left Gomes is behind front-running, right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro and Workers Party candidate Fernando Haddad, who is second in the polls. Bolsonaro has been hospitalized at the Albert Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo since being stabbed in an assassination attempt earlier this month.

Brazil's election is one of the most turbulent since the country's return to democracy three decades ago, coming after four years of unprecedented graft investigations revealed stunning levels of political corruption that fanned voter disdain for the political class.

Gomes, a tough-talking former governor of Ceará state, has positioned himself as a moderate alternative between Bolsonaro, who has praised Brazil's 1964-85 dictatorship, and Haddad, the hand-picked successor of the Worker's Party's jailed leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Polls suggest Gomes is unlikely to reach an Oct. 28 second-round run-off, which will take place if no candidate wins a majority of votes in the Oct. 7 first round.

(Reporting by Alexandre Caverni and Pedro Fonseca; Editing by David Gregorio)