Pope is leaning after delay in recovery – a bronchial spasm that requires additional ventilation

ROME – Pope Francis rested on Saturday after a Alarming adjustment In his recovery of two weeks after double pneumonia: the doctors had to put it on non-invasive mechanical ventilation following a cough match in which they inhaled vomiting that had to then extracted.

Doctors said it would take a day or two to evaluate how and if the episode had an impact on Francis’s general clinical condition. His prognosis remained guarded, which means he was not in danger.

In his brief update in the morning, on Saturday, the Vatican said: “The night passed quietly, the Pope rests.”

In the update at the end of Friday, the Vatican said that the 88 -year -old suffered an “isolated bronchial crisis”, a cough match in which Francisc inhaled vomiting, which led to a “sudden aggravation of the respiratory image”. Doctors aspired vomiting and placed Francis on non-invasive mechanical ventilation.

The pope remained consciously and alert at any time and cooperated with the maneuvers to help him recover. He replied well, with a good level of oxygen exchange and continued to wear a mask to receive additional oxygen, the Vatican said.

The episode, which took place at the beginning of the after -marked a delay in what had been two successive days of increasingly delighted reports from the doctors treating Francis at the Rome Hospital on February 14th. The Pope, who had part of the lungs as a young man, had a pulmonary disease and was admitted after a rooted bronchitis and turned into pneumonia and was admitted to both rafts.

Doctors say the episode is alarming

The Vatican said that the episode was different from the prolonged respiratory crisis of February 22, by being an isolated spas that led to Francisc of vomiting that produced.

Dr. John Coleman, a pulmonary critical care doctor at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said that the episode in which he is transmitted was alarming and emphasized Francis’s fragility and that his condition “can turn very quickly”.

“I think this is extremely important, given that the Pope has now been in the hospital for more than two weeks, and now continues to have these respiratory events and has now had this aspiration event that requires higher levels of support,” he told the Associated Press.

“So, given his age, his fragile condition and his previous pulmonary resection, this is very concerned,” added Coleman, who is not involved in Francisc.

Dr. William Feldman, a pulmonary specialist at Bright and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said it was a good sign that the Pope had been alert and oriented during the episode, but agreed that he marked “a worrying turn.”

“We will often use non -invasive ventilation as a way to try to avoid intubation or use of invasive mechanical ventilation,” Feldman said.

Types of non -invasive ventilation include a BIPAP car, which helps people breathe by pushing air into the lungs. Doctors will often try such a car to see if the patient’s blood levels are improving, so that eventually returns to the use of oxygen alone.

Doctors did not resume referring to the fact that Francis in “critical condition”, which was missing from their three -day statements now. But they say it is not in danger, given the complexity of its case.

Prayers continued to pour

On Friday late, Francis’s closest friend in the Vatican’s bureaucracy, Cardinal Argentine Victor Manuel Fernández, led the night prayer in St. Peter’s Square to pray for Francis’s health.

With other cardinators wrapped against the night shiver, Fernández asked the crowd to pray not only for Francis, but also for others, as Pope himself would do.

“Certainly, it is close to the heart of the Saint Father that our prayer is not only for him, but also for all those who at this time dramatic and suffering of the world bears the heavy burden of war, disease, poverty,” said Fernández, the head of the Vatican doctrine.

Also on Friday, the Vatican published a document signed by Francis on February 26 “from Gemelli Polyclinic”, a new official label that showed that Francisc still worked in the hospital.

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Carla K. Johnson contributed from Washington.

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