Row rages over Sharon treatment

8 January 2006

With doctors at Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital discussing the fate of Ariel Sharon, a dispute is raging in the medical profession over the treatment the prime minister has received.

Some Israeli doctors are saying anyone else in Mr Sharon's condition would have been allowed to die peacefully last Wednesday night when he was rushed to hospital with a massive stroke.

And, they are asking, would he be in the medical situation he is in now if the treatment had been different?

But Ron Krumer, the director of external affairs at Hadassah Hospital, has stood by the treatment the Israeli prime minister has received.

"All the medical decisions taken regarding the treatment of the prime minister were necessary according to his medical conditions," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4592488.stm


Too bad he didn't have a living will.

:popcorn:

Preferably by watching a videotape.

Perhaps Frist can help them out.

At least he was dead.

lol. I swear I'm a very compassionate person, but this post just cracked me up!

in a vegetative state. From my understanding with that much bleeding the probability of severe brain damage is quite high

Is it ethical to save anyones life if you know the result is a vegetable?

Fundamentally, it's a stall, buying time in a crisis. And a crisis it is, too.

all they have bought here is time.

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

LOL

Sharon breathing on his own: hospital
Mon Jan 9, 2006 4:45 AM ET

By Matt Spetalnick
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began breathing on his own on Monday, the first positive sign as doctors tried to rouse him from a medically induced coma to assess brain damage from a massive stroke.

"He is still connected to respirators that help him but the prime minister is breathing spontaneously," Shlomo Mor-Yosef, director of Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital, told reporters. "This is the first sign of some sort of activity in his brain."

As Israelis kept anxious vigil for the 77-year-old leader many had seen as the best hope for resolving their conflict with the Palestinians, Sharon's medical team gradually began reducing his sedation to help him regain consciousness.

The process is critical for determining the extent Sharon's faculties have been impaired and his chances for survival, though outside experts say there is no guarantee he will awaken from anesthesia.
(snip/...)

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-01-09T094533Z_01_KWA376715_RTRUKOC_0_US-MIDEAST.xml

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TV: Doctors Reducing Sedatives to Sharon
Published January 9, 2006, 2:32 AM CST

JERUSALEM -- Doctors on Monday began trying to bring Prime Minister Ariel Sharon out of an induced coma, Israel TV reported.

Hadassah Hospital, where Sharon is being cared for, had announced earlier Monday doctors would gradually decrease the amount of sedatives and try to awaken Sharon, who had suffered a massive stroke five days earlier.
(snip/...)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ats-ap_top12jan09,1,5738686.story?coll=chi-news-hed
(Free registration required)

that Sharon has died.

Seems to have started with the World Tribune, and has been picked up
by other news carriers, most of which appear to be right-wing.

I would guess it's quite possible that he's actually brain-dead and
is being kept alive artificially. Maybe the family just doesn't want to
take the last step, but it's also possible that it's being done for
political reasons - it certainly wouldn't be the first time in history
that's happened (I think it was a fairly regular occurrence in Soviet
Russia).

Yes, let's do--just for history's sake.

"If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin."

<snip>

"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon received anticoagulant drugs despite suffering from a disease of the blood vessels in the brain which, if diagnosed, would almost certainly have prevented doctors from prescribing these drugs - which are known to increase the risk of strokes and brain hemorrhage. One doctor close to the situation told Haaretz Monday that the disease was diagnosed by doctors treating Sharon at Hadassah University Hospital during his current hospitalization.

The disease, cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) could have greatly increased the risk of a brain hemorrhage, following the administration of the medication that he received after his first stroke Dec. 19, Haaretz has learned.

The diagnosis ocurred after examining CT scans Sharon has undergone, according to testimony presented Monday to Haaretz by a medical source involved in the treatment of the prime minister.

Ron Krumer, Hadassah's external affairs director, said in response "We are busy treating the prime minister and fighting to save his life. We are not dealing with anything else."
The doctor who provided the testimony defined the administering of the blood-thinning medication after the first stroke as a "screw up."


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