VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis had a quiet night in hospital, the Vatican said on Sunday (Feb 23), the morning after revealing the 88-year-old was in a “critical” condition.
The Holy See had late on Saturday reported the alarming news that the pope, who has been in hospital since Feb 14, had suffered a prolonged respiratory attack and required blood transfusions.
“The night passed peacefully, the pope rested,” the Holy See said in a short update on Sunday morning.
The Argentine pontiff, head of the Catholic Church since 2013, was initially admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital with bronchitis, but it developed into double pneumonia.
“The Holy Father’s condition continues to be critical, therefore, as explained (on Friday), the pope is not out of danger,” the Vatican said in a regular medical bulletin on Saturday evening.
“At the moment the prognosis is reserved,” it said.
Francis continues to be alert and “spent the day in an armchair even if he was suffering more than” the day before, the Vatican said.
It said he had on Saturday morning suffered a “prolonged asthmatic respiratory crisis, which also required the application of high-flow oxygen”.
Daily blood tests also “showed thrombocytopenia, associated with anaemia, which required the administration of blood transfusions”, it added.
Thrombocytopenia is a condition that occurs when the platelet count in someone’s blood is too low, which can cause trouble stopping bleeding – and can be life-threatening.
Blood or platelet transfusions, delivered via an intravenous (IV) line into a blood vessel, are given to people who are either bleeding heavily or at very high risk of bleeding, according to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“The pope gets worse,” headlined Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper on Sunday morning, while La Repubblica described it as the “darkest day” at the Vatican.
“The situation is becoming more worrying,” Fabrizio Pregliasco, a leading Italian virologist, told La Stampa daily, adding that “the next few hours and days will be crucial”.
