Tracheotomy for Sharon 'successful'

Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon underwent a successful tracheotomy to help wean him off a respirator that has been helping him breathe since he suffered a massive stroke on January 4, hospital officials said.

Sharon remained in critical but stable condition last night before the surgery, the hospital said in a statement. The surgery took less than an hour.

The hospital said that before the throat surgery, Sharon had a CT scan of his brain, which showed his condition was “unchanged since the previous scan, carried out last Thursday”.

Sharon had been taken off the last of the sedatives that have kept him in a medically induced coma on Saturday evening, but he was still unconscious.

In the tracheotomy, conducted under general anaesthesia, doctors cut a small hole in his neck to insert a tube directly into his windpipe.

Sharon had to undergo the procedure because the plastic tube currently connecting the prime minister’s windpipe with the respirator would have started to cause him damage if it remained in for much longer, said Dr Philip Stieg, chairman o neurosurgery at the Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York.

But Sharon’s comatose state and the fact that he was undergoing the tracheotomy did not bode well for the prime minister’s future, Stieg said. It was becoming more likely as time passed that Sharon would either remain in a vegetative state or have low cognitive abilities, he added.

“It suggests that the brain damage is as serious as we thought it was based on earlier reports and now its all playing out,” Stieg said. “He’s not turning the corner, he’s not waking up … they’re having to do more things to keep him alive.”

Doctors said on Saturday that Sharon, who has been unconscious since suffering his devastating stroke, had activity on both sides of his brain.