Doctors finished tests yesterday to determine if General Augusto Pinochet was mentally fit to stand trial for human rights abuses during his 1973-1990 dictatorship but it was not known when results would be released.
Despite the lack of results, Judge Juan Guzman, who is investigating more than 200 cases of Pinochet-era violence, said he had rescheduled his interrogation of the aging ex-dictator for January 23.
The three days of exams at Santiago's Military Hospital left Mr Pinochet (85) exhausted, said his son Mr Marco Antonio Pinochet.
The former army commander has diabetes and is fitted with a pacemaker. His doctors say that he suffered two strokes during the more than a year that he was under house arrest in Britain fighting extradition to Spain.
Anyone older than 70 facing trial in Chile has the right to a mental evaluation. Those declared mentally unfit are not tried.
Mr Guzman had planned to interrogate the former army commander-in-chief on Monday about his possible involvement in human rights abuses in the weeks after Pinochet's 1973 coup that ousted socialist President Salvador Allende.
While Mr Pinochet was being examined, excavators dug into a hill some 40 miles (70 km) west of Santiago looking for the remains of six Communist Party members who disappeared in 1976 and are believed to have been buried there.
The military told the Chilean government where the graves were as part of a six-month effort by religious institutions and the armed forces to gather information about the whereabouts of the bodies of the people who disappeared during Pinochet's rule.
Reuters