What The Medical Experts Say About Rocker Bret Michaels’ Prognosis After Brain Hemorrhage

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Posted on 27th April 2010 by Gordon Johnson in Uncategorized

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 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.

 http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2010/04/27/2010-04-27_doctors_say_it_is_unlikely_that_bret_michaels_emergency_appendectomy_led_to_brai.html

 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.  

Italian woman in right-to-die case worsens

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Posted on 12th October 2008 by Gordon Johnson in Uncategorized

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Date: 10/11/2008 1:51 PM

ROME (AP) _ The condition of an Italian woman at the center of a right-to-die case worsened after she suffered a massive hemorrhage, doctors said Saturday.

Eluana Englaro has been in a vegetative state for 16 years and her father has led a protracted court battle to disconnect her feeding tube, insisting it was her wish.

This summer a Milan court granted his request, setting off a political storm in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country. Italy does not allow euthanasia, but patients have a right to refuse treatment.

Catholic and anti-euthanasia groups protested the ruling by leaving bottles of water in front of Milan’s Duomo cathedral. Prosecutors appealed the decision and the father pledged not to disconnect the tube before Italy’s high court weighed in.

Carlo Alberto Defanti, Englaro’s doctor, told reporters gathered Saturday at a clinic in northern Italy that over the last two days Englaro had been bleeding from her uterus.

“It was a very abundant hemorrhage, which puts her life at risk,” he said. “This afternoon it stopped. We can’t make predications; if it doesn’t restart she may recover.”

Italian news reports said doctors had agreed not to give Englaro a blood transfusion.

Englaro was 20 years old when she fell into a vegetative state following a car accident in 1992. Two years later, doctors called her condition irreversible.

Her father, Beppino Englaro, has said she had visited a friend who was in a similar condition shortly before her accident and had expressed the will to refuse treatment if in the same situation.

The case has drawn comparisons here with that of Terry Schiavo, the American woman who was at the center of a right-to-die debate until her death in 2005. Schiavo’s husband, who wanted her feeding tube removed against her parents’ wishes, prevailed in a polarizing battle in the United States that reached Congress, President George W. Bush and the Supreme Court.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.