AILING “American Idol” contestant Christina Christian was released from a Los Angeles hospital Wednesday evening, shortly after she was informed she’d been voted off the red-hot Fox series.
Paramedics were called to Christian’s dressing room Wednesday afternoon after she told producers her sinuses were swollen and she was having trouble breathing.
Christian, 21, was hooked up to an oxygen mask and taken by ambulance to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center where she was connected to an intravenous drip and then diagnosed with stress-related dehydration and sinusitis.
With less than two hours to go until “American Idol” was due to air live on the East Coast, producers made the decision to persuade Christian to skip the evening’s show.
Co-hosts Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman told viewers Christian had been hospitalized, but gave no details.
Meanwhile, producers already knew that afternoon that the Brooklyn-born Christian, now living in Miami, was about to become the latest contestant to leave the program.
They then made the decision to tell her the vote results at 9:30 ET, about 25 minutes before East Coast viewers would learn the outcome.
The producers assigned the show’s in-house psychologist, Dr. Barry Goldstein, to tell Christian and her family in her hospital room.
“We felt as though we’d made the right decision,” co-executive producer Nigel Lythgoe told The Post yesterday. “Dr. Barry came back and said Christina felt as though we’d made the right decision [too].”
The news must have come as a great relief to Christian because she was soon released from the hospital and joined the other contestants and their families in a hotel suite to watch the West Coast airing of the show.
Lythgoe says he expects Christian to appear on next week’s show, perhaps in the audience, and hopes she’ll say a few words to her fans.