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Sharon in critical condition after surgery
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-12 14:21
JERUSALEM - Doctors removed nearly 2 feet of Ariel Sharon's large intestines
Saturday during emergency surgery, his seventh operation since suffering a
debilitating stroke last month.
Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon looks at his watch as he attends a session of the
Knesset in Jerusalem in this July 12, 2004 file photo. Sharon,
incapacitated by a January 4 stroke, underwent emergency surgery on
February 11, 2006 for digestive complications, Jerusalem's Hadassah
hospital said. [Reuters] | Surgeons managed to
stabilize the comatose Israeli prime minister after initially fearing for his
life, but the latest complication makes it even more unlikely he will recover.
The hospital said Sunday he remained in critical but stable condition, as he has
throughout the past five weeks.
Israelis closely followed their 77-year-old leader's latest ordeal, with TV
stations repeatedly breaking into regular programming for updates, but the
country already has come to terms with his departure from politics.
Sharon's political heir, Ehud Olmert, quickly took the reins as acting prime
minister after Sharon's Jan. 4 stroke and appears poised to lead Sharon's
centrist Kadima Party to victory in March 28 elections.
Sharon was rushed to surgery Saturday morning after doctors, who had noticed
abdominal swelling, conducted a CT scan and a laparoscopy, or insertion of a
small camera through the abdominal wall.
Surgeons detected necrotic — or dead — tissue in the bowels and removed 20
inches of his large intestine, Hadassah Hospital director Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef
said.
The necrosis was caused either by infection or a drop in the blood supply to
the intestines, something common in comatose patients, the hospital director
said. Mor-Yosef said doctors did not find blocked blood vessels.
Mor-Yosef said Saturday's surgery was relatively simple, and that Sharon's
main medical problem continues to be the coma. Asked whether Sharon could come
out of the coma, Mor-Yosef said: "All possibilities remain open, but with each
passing day, the chances are lower."
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