Doctors decided to keep Pope Francis’ prognosis guarded and indicated they needed 24 to 48 hours to evaluate how and if the episode impacted his overall clinical condition.
Pope Francis suffered an isolated coughing fit on Friday that resulted in him inhaling vomit and requiring non-invasive mechanical ventilation, the Vatican said, announcing an alarming setback in his two-week long battle against double pneumonia.
The 88-year-old pontiff remained conscious and alert at all times and cooperated with the medical procedures to help him recover.
He responded well, with a good level of oxygen exchange and was continuing to wear a mask to receive supplemental oxygen, the Vatican said.
The episode, which occurred in the early afternoon, resulted in a “sudden worsening of the respiratory picture.”
Doctors decided to keep Pope Francis’ prognosis guarded and indicated they needed 24 to 48 hours to evaluate how and if the episode impacted his overall clinical condition.
The development marked a setback in what had been two successive days of increasingly upbeat reports from doctors treating the pope at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital since 14 February.
The pope, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, has lung disease and was admitted after a bout of bronchitis worsened and turned into pneumonia in both lungs.
Doctor John Coleman, a pulmonary critical care doctor at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said the episode as relayed by the Vatican was alarming and underscored Pope Francis’ fragility and that his condition “can turn very quickly.”
“I think this is extremely concerning, given the fact that the pope has been in the hospital now for over two weeks and now he’s continuing to have these respiratory events and now had this aspiration event that is requiring even higher levels of support,” he said.
“So given his age and his fragile state and his previous lung resection, this is very concerning,” added Coleman, who is not involved in the pope’s care.
The episode, which doctors described as an “isolated crisis of bronchial spasm” began as a coughing fit in which Pope Francis inhaled vomit.
Doctors did not resume referring to Pope Francis being in “critical condition,” which has been absent from their statements for the past three days.
But they say he isn’t out of danger, given the complexity of his case.
Earlier on Friday, Francis had spent the morning alternating high flows of supplemental oxygen with a mask and praying in the chapel.
He had breakfast, read the day’s newspapers and was receiving respiratory physiotherapy, the Vatican said.
ADVERTISEMENTThe Vatican also published a document signed by Pope Francis on 26 February ‘From the Gemelli Polyclinic,’ a new official tagline that showed Francis was still working from the hospital.
Late on Friday, Francis’ closest friend in the Vatican bureaucracy, Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, led the nightly prayer in St. Peter’s Square to pray for the pope’s health.
With other cardinals bundled against the night chill, Fernández urged the crowd to pray not just for Francis but for others as the pope himself would.
“Certainly it is close to the Holy Father’s heart that our prayer is not only for him, but also for all those who in this particular dramatic and suffering moment of the world, bear the hard burden of war, of sickness, of poverty,” said Fernández.
ADVERTISEMENT