Sharon's Health Back In News

After the initial flurry of news and postings about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke and medical care, things had quieted down. Sharon has not come out of his coma, but now has had to go into surgery to deal with a serious digestive problem.

Mr. Sharon, 77, has been in a coma since suffering a massive stroke on Jan. 4 and hopes for a recovery had been fading even before the latest complications.

Doctors performed an abdominal scan on Saturday and found serious problems with blood flow to his intestines, which caused the damage to his digestive system, the hospital said.

Mr. Sharon was rushed into surgery that began before noon and was expected to last three to six hours, according to Yael Bossem-Levy, a hospital spokeswoman.

The latest reports say that the operation was successful and Sharon was out of immediate danger after a four hour operation. Television reports suggest that the doctors had to remove a bunch of necrotic tissue because of lack of blood flow to parts of his intestines.

UPDATE:
The Jerusalem Post notes that the situation was quite serious - nearly 50cm of Sharon's large intestines were removed.

Acute occlusion of a branch of the superior mesenteric artery is usually due to a local embolism (clot) that originates in the blood vessel; the branch is about three centimeters in diameter. When blood does not reach the colon, it causes tissue to die in a process called necrosis. This condition is life threatening because dead tissue poisons the body and requires urgent surgical opening of the blood vessel and removal of the necrotic tissue.

According to Hadassah, first signs of a problem occurred at 4 a.m. when Sharon's blood pressure dropped suddenly and his abdomen swelled. He was taken from a computerized tomography (CT) scan, which showed necrotic tissue, and then rushed to the operating room, where surgery was performed by Prof. Avi Rivkind, chief of surgery and head of the trauma department, and senior surgeon Prof. Alon Pikarsky. The anesthesiologists were Dr. Yitzhak Gozal and Dr. Yoram Weiss, who were involved in Sharon's brain operations.

Sharon suffered a mild stroke in December, and then suffered a major stroke in January. Strokes are caused by blood clots blocking the flow of blood in the brain. It would seem that the doctors are still having trouble keeping Sharon's clotting factors under control.

Turning to the political aspect of this crisis, Israpundit believes that the current Israeli government is in violation of Israel's Basic law. He is probably right - given that Likud controls the highest number of seats at present (the Kadima party doesn't currently hold any seats - it was a new party made up of Knesset members from several different parties), it should fall to Likud to pull together the members to form a government.

This is not an area I'm familiar with, but it is definitely worth investigating further. I would imagine that the counter argument may be that Olmert and the other members who broke from Likud are still treated as Likud members until the new elections determine the seat configurations. I don't find it particularly persuasive either, but perhaps some readers have further insight.

UPDATE:
Decision '08 and Pajamas Media has more.

Technorati: ariel sharon, stroke, peace process, disengagement, palestinians, israel, middle east, olmert, continuity.