Mickey Kaus has this ominous note on his Slate blog:
Sen. Tim Johnson is still under sedation, and AP's report contains this alarming quote (missing from the version now posted on WaPo):
Dr. Keith Siller, director of the Comprehensive Stroke Care Center at NYU Medical Center and assistant professor at the NYU School of Medicine, said it is unusual for a patient to be sedated after brain surgery for more than a few days.
"The two-week period is longer than I would be happy with," he said.
Siller is not the doctor on the scene, of course. Congressional Quarterly has some more encouraging stats [via IP]. ...
The AP report can be found here at CBSNews.com. The Congressional Quarterly item that Kaus refers to has this:
The prognosis for Johnson’s condition, diagnosed as congenital arteriovenous malformation (AVM), depends on a number of factors.
Of the small percentage of patients with AVMs who have bleeding, about a quarter die within several days. Another quarter suffer minor loss of function. One-fourth have a more severe loss of strength, motor skills and speech, and one-fourth make a full recovery.
The first sentence in the second paragraph tells us something important: that AVM with bleeding indicates an alarmingly high mortality rate (25%), and thus that Senator Johnson and those who care about him have much to be thankful for. The rest tells us almost nothing. It creates three logical categories (major damage, minor damage, and no damage) and says that cases are evenly distributed across those categories.
I note that there has been some controversy in the regional blogosphere over the ethics of this kind of commentary. If there is an ethical problem in "non-attending physicians" and other informed persons making comments about Senator Johnson's condition, the Congressional Quarterly and Dr. Siller do not seem aware of it. I think that, so long as the status of the commentator is made clear, there is no problem.
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