After a Tracheotomy, Sharon Lays Unconscious
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
JERUSALEM – Prime Minister Sharon underwent a successful tracheotomy yesterday to help wean him off a respirator that has been helping him breathe, but the Israeli leader’s failure to regain consciousness after a massive stroke was drawing increasing concern.
The surgery to insert a plastic tube in Mr. Sharon’s windpipe took less than an hour and followed a CT scan that showed no changes in the 77-year-old leader’s brain.
Though Mr. Sharon was taken off sedatives Saturday, he had not regained consciousness more than a day later. The hospital continued to describe his condition as critical but stable.
His stand-in, acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, will remain in his post until Israel’s election on March 28, Attorney General Meni Mazuz said. He sidestepped a ruling that Mr. Sharon would be incapacitated permanently, requiring the Cabinet to name a replacement.
The tracheotomy was necessary because the former tube to a respirator would have started to cause damage if it remained in place, the chairman of neurosurgery at the Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York, Dr. Philip Stieg, said.
The sedatives had been used to keep Mr. Sharon in a medically induced coma and give his brain time to heal.
But Dr. Stieg, who was not involved in Mr. Sharon’s care, said it is becoming more probable as time passes that Mr. Sharon will either remain in a vegetative state or have low cognitive abilities.
His condition “suggests that the brain damage is as serious as we thought it was based on earlier reports, and now it’s all playing out,” Dr. Stieg said. “He’s not turning the corner, he’s not waking up … they’re having to do more things to keep him alive.”
In Mr. Olmert’s first major step, he led his Cabinet to a unanimous decision yesterday to allow Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem to vote in a January 25 parliamentary election, clearing away an obstacle that threatened to cause postponement of the vote for a new Palestinian legislature.
The Cabinet decision – which came in the wake of American pressure – said the voting could proceed as long as armed groups such as Hamas were not on the ballot. The vote would be held under a compromise used in previous elections that let Jerusalem Arabs cast absentee ballots in post offices.
