Peres remains sedated, will undergo new CT scan Sunday
President Rivlin visits his predecessor, calls him a ‘fighter’; neurologist says Peres may no longer be in life-threatening danger
Former president Shimon Peres remained in serious but stable condition throughout the weekend, his office said Saturday evening, with no meaningful change to his state.
Peres was set to undergo a new CT scan on Sunday, after which doctors would decide on their course of action.
Peres was hospitalized at the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv on Tuesday after suffering a stroke. He has been under sedation since then, with his condition consistently described as serious but stable.
President Reuven Rivlin visited Peres at the hospital on Saturday evening, saying he was a “fighter” who, if it were up to him, would prevail.
“I came this evening to encourage the family and give them strength, he said. “We all hope to see the ninth president get better.”
Meanwhile a senior neurologist from the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem said the statesman’s condition had likely moved “from the acute to the chronic” — meaning he was likely no longer in life-threatening danger, but now faced more protracted health challenges.
Prof. Avinoam Reches told the Walla news website Saturday that “when a man suffers such massive bleeding there is immediate danger to his life. I am not the treating doctor and his medical file is not open to me, but according to reports coming from the hospital, our friends in Sheba worked correctly and succeeded in stabilizing his condition, so the immediate danger has passed.
“Peres,” Reches said, “is still in danger, but his main enemies now are the inevitable infections coming from a long hospitalization and the development of an edema around the hematoma in his head [a swelling around blood vessels affected by the stroke].
“Theoretically, he could get another stroke but I think the chances of this are low. I assume they will lower the dosage of his blood thinners but then there is another risk of another heart attack. The doctors are stuck between a rock and a hard place in such situations, they need to specifically weigh risk against risk with any option.”
Reches said that if Peres’s condition continues on its current course, his hematoma “will be mostly absorbed over the coming weeks. Blood is always absorbed. The situations in which they decide to do surgery are ones in which the hematoma is large and pushes against critical nerve centers like the brainstem, since if there is not enough time for the blood to be absorbed, when the process takes several weeks, then it can cause irreversible damage.”
“With Peres they saw that he is ‘containing’ the hematoma and the damage is consistent,” Reches said. “No new neurological symptoms are appearing and so [his doctors] correctly decided to take the conservative route of treatment.”
AFP contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.