Rocker and reality TV star Bret Michaels remained in an Intensive Care Unit Tuesday under 24-hour surveillance as doctors try to find the source of the bleeding in his brain. How the “Celebrity Apprentice” contestant does during the next few days is crucial.
In the meantime, there have been many press stories theorizing, or interviewing physicians, about what caused the Poison frontman’s subarachnoid hemorrhage last Thursday night, and what his prognosis is for the future.
Updates about Michaels’ condition are being posted on his Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/notes/bret-michaels/sunday-update-on-brets-condition/388988472569#!/notes/bret-michaels/bret-michaels-update-42610/389241632569
“Once again we can’t thank everyone enough for all the well wishes and prayers being sent Bret’s way!” the page said Tuesday morning. “Look for an official medical report from doctors this week at BretMichaels.com. Please remember Bret is, and always has been, a fighter and survivor and is under the best medical care possible.”
“Reportedly, Bret Michaels didn’t sustain any trauma,” Rob Brouhard wrote on About.com. “He just started bleeding near his brain stem. It has been reported that doctors aren’t exactly sure what caused the bleeding, but the overwhelming speculation is that Michaels had a brain aneurysm, one version of a stroke.”
Brouhard defined an aneurysm as a “soft spot” in a blood vessel that ruptures if pressure gets high or there is a blow to that area.
AOL Health spoke to Dr. Jeffrey Thomas, spokesman for the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, about what might be causing Michaels’ bleeding. Thomas said it could be due to a ruptured cerebral aneurysm, a dissection of a cerebral blood vessel or the bleeding of a vein. http://www.aolhealth.com/2010/04/26/neurosurgeon-bret-michaels-bleeding-likely-from-1-of-3-causes/?icid=main|main|dl3|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolhealth.com%2F2010%2F04%2F26%2Fneurosurgeon-bret-michaels-bleeding-likely-from-1-of-3-causes%2F
The physician said that “the most benign” of those three possibilities would be bleeding from a vein. Recovery is a snap. But a dissection or tear of a blood vessel, or an aneurysm, would not bode well for Michaels.
Published reports have said that Michaels has fuzzy vision, dizziness and slurred speech since he was hospitalized late Thursday after getting a agonizing headache.
Michaels is diabetic, and had an emergency appendectomy earlier this month. There was initially some speculation that Michaels’ brain hemorrhage was somehow related to the surgery.
But in a story in the New York Daily News Tuesday, several doctors dismissed the notion that the surgery could have directly had caused the bleeding in Michaels’ brain.
One doctor said that high blood pressure is the most common cause of brain hemorrhages. Another said that Michaels’ may have developed a blood clot in his leg after his surgery and been put on blood thinners, which could have prompted the bleeding in his brain.
MTV.com turned to a stroke expert about Michaels’ bleeding at the base of his skull. That physician, Dr. Joseph Broderick, said that while the rocker’s condition is serious, it is survivable.
