Sharon's doctors more confident

2006-01-10 07:30

Jerusalem - Doctors treating Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon were monitoring his body's responses on Tuesday as they continued to ease him out of a coma buoyed by initial signs that he had retained at least some brain function after last week's massive stroke.

The surgical team at Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital warned that it might take days to gauge whether the 77-year-old premier would recover his cognitive or linguistic powers.

But the hospital's director Professor Shlomo Mor Yosef hailed the response to pain in Sharon's right limbs on Monday when doctors began reducing the sedatives which had been keeping him in a coma to help his body recover.

"We carried out pain stimulus tests which involve pressure," said Mor Yosef.

"In the stimulus, we noted that the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, slightly moved his right arm and right leg.

"It was a very clear reaction to pain... These movements changed and became more and more significant the more we lowered the sedation," he said.

Doctors more confident

After days of uncertainty, doctors have appeared more confident about saving his life, but warned his condition will not allow him to absorb the stresses of leading the Jewish state.

The prognosis has left Israel staring into a political void expected to seep far beyond the country into the wider Middle East.

Felix Umansky, the chief neurosurgeon in attendance on Sharon, stressed the premier remained in a critical condition and that it would take days for the damage to his brain to be assessed.

"It is still too early to speak about cognitive function," he said.

"It will take a number of days."

Asked what signs the team would be looking for over the next few days, Umansky said: "That the responses to pain will be more significant, that the movement of his limbs will be more significant, and later on, that he will open his eyes.

Traumatic memories

Sharon's plight has revived traumatic memories of the death a decade ago of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, whose assassination by a Jewish extremist triggered a wave of violence and a collapse of the peace process.

Israelis and world leaders have already braced themselves for the end of the Sharon era.

"His illness, just as 10 years ago Yitzhak Rabin's death, put yet another obstacle in the path of the peacemakers," said former US president Bill Clinton, who tried, but failed to win an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

The Palestinians have also expressed fears about the impact of a vacuum in Israeli politics but their leader, Mahmud Abbas, said that he did not expect a radical shift with the exit of Sharon.

"I do not believe that a substantial change will take place in Israeli policy apart from the personality," he said.

- AFP