Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto has undergone leg surgery but is continuing to work as he recovers, a spokesman said Tuesday.

The defence minister and former general, who had suffered for years from a limp attributed to parachuting accidents, underwent surgery on his left leg at the National Defence Central Hospital in Jakarta, his team said.

Specifics of the procedure were kept under wraps, but Prabowo, who succeeds President Joko Widodo in October, described the surgery as "full of risks" in a social media post.

He has since resumed his duties as defence minister and was in attendance at an anniversary celebration for Indonesian police on Monday, Prabowo spokesman Dahnil Anzar Simanjuntak told AFP.

"Thank God, he is now very fit. [His leg] has healed and is much better now," Dahnil said.

Pictures shared to both men's official Instagram accounts on Sunday showed the president, popularly known as Jokowi, visiting a bathrobe-clad Prabowo while he was still in hospital.

"I was aware and understood that the medical procedure I was undergoing was full of risks and my life was at stake," Prabowo wrote in his accompanying caption.

The former general has courted controversy for past allegations of human rights abuses, accused by rights groups of a role in disappearing democracy activists at the end of dictator Suharto's rule in the late 1990s.

But the fiery populist secured an easy election win on the back of his pledge to continue Jokowi's popular agenda of strong economic development and his choice of the president's eldest son Gibran as his vice president.