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Originally Posted by GratefulCitizen
Age ~early to mid 60s.
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This definitely puyts him out of my AO, although an aging pediatrician I work with defines our field as, "Anyone younger than me."
Hopefully someone who follows patients after major vascular surgeries in an adult age group can give further insight...
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He had an aortic tear. At the time of the surgery, he also was suffering from pneumonia.
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Bum luck - definitely a high risk anesthesthesia case due to lung ventilation/oxygenation issues - glad he did okay. An alternative (and more likely) scenaria is that he could have developed pneumonia as a result of aspiration of stomach contents as this was an emergency surgery and they probably did not want to wait long enough for his stomach contents to pass further along the digestive tract.
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He was put into an induced coma during intial recovery from surgery.
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Not an uncommon practice after a major surgery - less problems with pain management and less stress on healing surgical wounds. Easier to control parameters such as blood pressure which are important after vascular surgery.
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One of his kidneys failed. The other one was failing.
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Probably in due to the decreased blood flow to the kidneys as a result of the aortic tear/dissection. The tear/dissection was likely in the chest or abdomen above where the blood vessels feeding the kidneys branch off. The kidneys are used to seeing a lot of blood flow so they tend to be very sensitive and show loss of function more rapidly and easily than other organs in the lower half of the body. It's not uncommon to have transient kidney failure after an emergency such as this. With good perfusion (blood flow and blood pressure) restored to the kidneys, their function will typically recover over time if the insult/ischemia was brief enough to not cause permanent damage (ischemia = lack of blood flow/oxygen.) Typically the first 7-10 days of recovery will show if the kidney will recovery over time if their workload is lightened with intermittent dialysis.
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His condition started improving rapidly. He completed his final dialysis treatment last weekend and his kidney is GTG. Would this qualify as an unusual recovery?
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Again - glad to hear the
Padre is doing better.
In children this recovery course would be expected - either they make a fairly speedy recovery or the don't recover. In a gentleman in his 60's there are a lot of other variables including his baseline health/fitness and other medical conditions, if any, that can make recovery slower and less likely than in kids.
IMHO, knowing whether or not this was an exceptionally fast recovery is not as important as the fact that he is getting better and back to serving his community. It's kind of like when a child does a good deed - knowing whether you were the one who instilled those values is not as important as the fact that the kid the right thing.
My $.02, I'd like to hear some other thoughts on this.