In a Democratic primary where the three leading candidates are in their 70s, Mr. Sanders’s health issue has intensified the scrutiny on age as a factor in running for president. Many Democratic voters have said they worried about nominating a septuagenarian candidate.
Mr. Sanders returned to Burlington over the weekend after being hospitalized in Las Vegas for three days last week, recovering from a heart attack. His campaign said he felt chest pains during an event last Tuesday, and he was taken to the hospital, where two stents were inserted into an artery.
Since then, his campaign has insisted that Mr. Sanders does not intend to drop out of the race. During a telephone call with staff members on Monday, Mr. Sanders said he felt “more strongly about the need for a political revolution today than I did when I began this campaign.”
Jane Sanders, who remains one of Mr. Sanders’s closest advisers, said that idea was “something that the entire campaign, and especially me, have been saying for months — not for his health but for the ability to keep up that kind of a pace for everybody else, too.”
Campaign officials also downplayed Mr. Sanders’s remarks.
“As Bernie said, we are going to have an active campaign,” Faiz Shakir, Mr. Sanders’s campaign manager, said in a statement on Tuesday evening. “Instead of a breakneck series of events that lap the field, we are going to keep a marathoner’s pace that still manages to outrun everyone else.”
Another adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic, said Mr. Sanders had been thinking about changing the pace of his campaign schedule for some time, and aides discussed this with him when he was in the hospital.
Known for keeping a grueling schedule on the campaign trail, Mr. Sanders will often crisscross a state with multiple stops for big rallies and smaller town hall-style events and gatherings.