New York - Joan Rivers, the brilliant but acerbic US stand-up comic who blazed a trail for female comedians, was rushed to hospital in New York on Thursday in a critical condition, reports said.
US media said the 81-year-old Rivers stopped breathing while undergoing surgery on her vocal chords at a clinic in New York's Upper East Side and rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital.
A spokesman for the New York Fire Department told AFP that officers responded to an emergency call at 09:40 from an address on the Upper East Side, taking a patient to Mount Sinai.
The hospital refused to comment, citing patient privacy.
Celebrity news site TMZ said Rivers was in critical condition after she stopped breathing during surgery on her throat and that her daughter Melissa was on her way to New York.
TV channel ABC reported that Rivers had been rushed to hospital in a critical condition. A woman matching her description went into cardiac arrest at a clinic and was taken to Mount Sinai, it said.
Rivers earlier this week filmed a special 90-minute episode of her E! TV show Fashion Police and has a string of appearances scheduled in the coming weeks, followed by a UK tour in October.