Already slim chances for comatose Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's recovery from a massive stroke dimmed further, doctors said, after he needed emergency surgery to remove a decayed part of his large intestine. The hospital where he is being treated said yesterday he stabilized after the operation but remained in critical condition.
The four-hour operation on Saturday was successful, doctors said, but Sharon has yet to awaken since his stroke on Jan. 4.
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 stroke, and appears poised to lead Sharon's centrist Kadima Party to victory in March 28 elections.
Sharon was rushed to surgery on 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 50cm, or one-third, of the large intestine, said Hadassah Hospital director Shlomo Mor-Yosef. It was his seventh operation since suffering the stroke.
The necrosis was either caused 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."
The hospital statement yesterday morning said, "Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's condition stabilized after surgery, but it is still described this morning as critical and stable. The prime minister is in the general intensive care unit."
Since the stroke, Sharon has been hooked up a breathing tube. A feeding tube was inserted in his stomach on Feb. 1.
Sean Morrison, a professor of geriatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, said that "long-term comatose patients typically die of complications like this," referring to necrosis.
Morrison said Sharon's chances for survival are now "extremely small, almost zero."
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