There was no change overnight in the condition of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is fighting for his life on a respirator after suffering a severe stroke, the director of Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, said Friday. „The night passed without change,” Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef told reporters shortly after 7 A.M. „All the parameters that we are measuring… are stable.” Sharon remained in stable condition at Hadassah and his inter-cranial pressure was steady, meaning there is no need to drain fluid from his brain, his doctors said Friday. „This is again a positive sign,” said Mor-Yosef, adding that the doctors had not yet decided whether or when to give Sharon another CT scan. However, Sharon’s doctors acknowledged Thursday night that Sharon has probably suffered irreversible brain damage that would preclude his ever resuming office. The official statement released Thursday by Hadassah said merely that Sharon was in serious but stable condition after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage on Wednesday due to the rupture of an artery wall. That statement, issued by Mor-Yosef, said that Sharon is under sedation on a respirator and paralyzed, that he is likely to remain under sedation for up to 72 hours, and that it is impossible to know what his condition really is until he emerges from sedation. Mor-Yosef added that predictions for the future are almost impossible to make. „We can’t know what the results of the surgery will be, whether it will have influenced his motor skills or his ability to think. Only after he comes out of the induced coma will we be able to make an assessment.” Unofficially, however, Sharon’s doctors echoed the assessment given to Haaretz earlier by other senior doctors who had not personally examined the premier, but were relying on media reports of his condition. These doctors told Haaretz that the prime minister appeared to have suffered extensive and irreversible brain damage. Depending on the amount of blood he hemorrhaged and where exactly in his brain the hemorrhage occurred, this damage could range from impaired physical and mental functioning to spending the rest of his life in a permanent vegetative state – if he survives at all, the senior doctors said. But based on the information publicly available, the chances that he will survive appear to be low, they added. Following his first stroke, which was caused by a blood clot, Sharon was put on blood-thinning medication to try to prevent a recurrence. However, such drugs increase the risk of hemorrhaging, and a brain hemorrhage in someone on blood-thinning medication is almost always fatal, the senior doctors explained. The fact that doctors at Hadassah operated on Sharon for about nine hours also indicates that they had great difficulty stopping the bleeding and that the damage was extensive, the senior doctors added. „The chances of him waking up anytime soon are close to zero,” one senior neurosurgeon told Haaretz. „They would not even have performed brain surgery on most people in the condition in which Sharon arrived at the hospital.” Nevertheless, he added, surgery was the proper decision in Sharon’s case, since every effort ought to be made for a prime minister. Doctors will try Sunday to revive Sharon from his induced coma to determine the effects of the hemorrhage for the first time since it happened on Wednesday night. „This is a lengthy process,” Mor-Yosef said when asked when Sharon could be expected to regain consciousness. „It won’t be in the coming hours. It will be at least 48 hours after the prime minister’s emergence from surgery.” He said the treatment would decrease pressure in the prime minister’s skull. After the sedation period, doctors hope to gradually waken the prime minister. Mor-Yosef said doctors had not received a „no resuscitation order,” which would bar them from trying to revive a patient whose heart or breathing has stopped. „We are fighting for the life of the prime minister, with no compromise,” Mor-Yosef said. Mor-Yosef said that said Sharon’s pupils were responding to light, „which means the brain is functioning.” The hospital chief also defended the decision to take Sharon to the Jerusalem hospital, a journey of an extra 30 minutes, rather than drive to the nearer medical center in Be’er Sheva. He said that it was better for the prime minister to have been treated at the hospital that knew his case. Other doctors, not involved in Sharon’s treatment, also expressed understanding with what they said were tough decisions about Sharon’s care. „There are problems when you treat a figure who is a political persona or a VIP,” said Dr. Gabi Barabash, the director of Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv. „Treatment of a VIP adds stress to the judgment system, and stress is unproductive.” „I don’t think they made a mistake,” Barabash said of the decision to take the premier to Jerusalem, rather than to the closer Soroka hospital in Be’er Sheva. The two hospitals are just half an hour apart, the medical staff at Hadassah is familiar with his case, and Soroka doesn’t have a magnetic resonance imager, used in brain scans, he said. „If there is an ambulance that is available at the door to the house that can leave immediately and a helicopter that still takes time to arrive, it is preferable to get moving,” Dr. Zeev Feldman, a neurosurgeon at Tel Hashomer Hospital outside Tel Aviv, told Channel 2 TV. „Generally speaking, it’s best to come faster,” said Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at Ichilov and the University of California at Los Angeles. „But I’m not sure that with such massive bleeding, and the time difference of 10 to 20 minutes that they’re talking about … would have been significant.” Mor-Yosef said the operation on Sharon had focused on the right side of his brain, and that he was paralyzed during the procedure. „The paralysis was a paralysis that we, the doctors, created,” he said. Neurosurgeons had fought to stabilize Sharon’s condition and stop new bleeding detected in his brain Thursday morning, more than eight hours after the prime minister was rushed into emergency surgery. „All the parameters… are as expected following this type of surgery,” said Mor-Yosef. „Part of the treatment of the prime minister, in order to preserve low pressure in the skull, is sedation and respiration for at least the next 24 hours.” Mor-Yosef earlier addressed rumors sweeping the country that Sharon’s condition is far worse than described by his doctors. „I came here first to update you and second to stop the rumors that are flooding the country,” he said. „I pledge that every change in the prime minister’s condition will be announced in a statement by Hadassah.” Sharon emerged from hours of surgery Thursday morning with vital signs showing „functional and stable” levels, and with a CT scan showing that the bleeding in his brain had been halted. But the prime minister’s condition remained grave, Mor-Yosef said. „The prime minister had a CT scan that showed that the bleeding has stopped,” Mor-Yosef told reporters at the entrance to the Jerusalem hospital. „He was then put in the neurological emergency unit for observation.”
BPI-info
BPI-info
