Tel-Chai Nation

In another startling report on Ariel Sharon's health situation (via IRIS Blog), the doctors admit that, after the first stroke he suffered, they'd concealed his condition:

The general medical condition of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was more critical than his doctors and advisers have reported since his first stroke on December 18, 2005. In addition to the heart problem they disclosed, Sharon was suffering from cardiac and cerebral diseases that the doctors kept from the public....Haaretz's inquiry shows that Sharon also suffered from more serious, life-threatening heart problems, including a large aneurysm in the septum. This is known to be a source of cerebral blood embolisms, and indeed led to the blood clot that caused Sharon's first stroke, senior doctors at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem believe.

However, Sharon also suffered from other heart diseases. These include a shunt that causes blood to flow spontaneously through the hole in the septum from right to left - the wrong direction - which is dangerous. Sharon also had other conditions in the cardiac septum that created further risks of blood clots that could wind up in the brain.

Senior doctors said this usually requires early treatment with blood-thinners and cardiac catheterization, as the cardiologists and neurologists at Hadassah had recommended.

But they said it also required closer surveillance, because the blood thinner Sharon had received could have been extremely dangerous, due to the additional disease discovered, cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), which is liable to make cerebral hemorrhaging extremely hard to treat - as was the case.

The CAA diagnosis, which Haaretz revealed some two weeks ago, was also concealed from the public.

Senior doctors said the dangerous heart disease Sharon had raises several other questions about the partial and vague information that his doctors gave the media and the public under the guise of "full disclosure."

Another senior doctor said the doctors were stuck between a rock and a hard place. The cardiac disease created the danger of an embolism, but the medicine to prevent this increased chances of cerebral hemorrhaging.

Why was this not spoken about earlier? Don't they realize just how serious this is, and that by covering it up, they're only making things worse for Sharon's health? If you ask me, I think this really opens up a lot of new questions regarding medicine and politics.