Pope Francis in critical condition, Vatican says

now another big story The Vatican says Pope Francis is now in critical condition after a severe asthma attack today the pope is entering his second week in a Rome hospital where a respiratory infection led to pneumonia in both lungs among the millions of faithful praying for him the Archbishop of New York it’s not looking good I admire his grit I admire his resilience I’m praying with him and for him but I think we have to be realistic as he certainly is our Stephanie Bennett is live with the latest on his condition Stephanie hey John ya the Vatican says Pope francis’s Health has deteriorated over the last 24 hours and as you mentioned describing his condition as critical now the Vatican says he suffered a prolonged asthma-like respiratory crisis and he needed blood transfusions because of a low platelet count associated with anemia doctors also had to administer a high flow of oxygen because of his breathing crisis but he remains alert though is more unwell they say than yesterday saying at the moment the prognosis remains guarded Pope Francis was admitted to Rome’s jamell Hospital on February 14th he has since been diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs along with bacterial viral and fungal infections on top of his chronic bronchitis right now dozens are gathering outside the hospital to pray we are here to pray for the Holy Father we’ have all come together in a very spontaneous way some nuns organized this rosary but we have all joined in this prayer I believe that the Pope needs the unity and the prayer of the church to accompany and support him at this difficult time as well and double pneumonia can inflame and Scar both lungs making it difficult to breathe of course the pope has a history of respiratory

illness having lost part of one lung as a young man and suffering from pneumonia in the past doctors have warned that the 88-year-old patient of course he is very fragile for now we’re keeping our eyes on this very closely back to you John all right Stephanie Bennett from London Stephanie thank you for more on the Pope’s condition and his Outlook let’s bring in Dr Mark seagull Fox News senior medical analyst uh it it doesn’t sound good Dr seagull John I it’s hard to know exactly how bad it is you know his his do his main doctor Dr Alfieri is saying he’s guarded and I want to say one thing that’s positive he’s not on a ventilator he’s breathing on his own he’s awake and alert all of those are good signs and the fact that he got blood might simply be to improve his oxygen carrying capacity which you need in a time like this and they’re obviously giving him oxygen when he had that asthmatic event this morning and they they gave him oxygen they probably also used Bronco dilators which helped to open up the lungs and if you get over that and you’re breathing better that’s a good sign we want to be watching to see how much oxygen he needs that he remains off the ventilator Stephanie said you know look he has multiple different bugs that bothers me bilateral pneumonia it makes it a lot more difficult to recover than one one lung and the fact that he had pneumonia before and that he’s lost part of a lung before when he was young means that his reserve his lung Reserve is less and he’s 88 years old so there’s a lot of things that make this hard to say whether he’s going to recover but the longer he goes and proves the better off it looks and again not on a ventilator a very good sign yeah the the good news is they say he’s in uh although he is in critical condition they say the pain for him is no worse than it was yesterday but I want to talk about sepsis that his doctors are saying that sepsis is one of the big dangers here explain to us how that works what that’s all about and that would be the main danger in my opinion John that plus respiratory failure is he Brea again does he continue to breathe on his own without assistance th that’s one thing sepsis means that whatever the bacteria is gets from the lungs into the bloodstream when that happens your blood pressure goes down you need support to keep your blood pressure up it gets more and more difficult you get acidic very difficult to recover from that the fact that he’s not septic and not in sepsis and he’s stable Vital Signs must be stable in fact another good sign they watch for that but it’s good that it hasn’t happen yet CU a lot of the times it happens early on if they battle this back with antibiotics and he

continues to stay stable there’s a pretty good chance he could still recover I had a bout with pneumonia a little more than a year ago uh it came with some flu and it was probably the worst illness I’ve had in my life far worse than covid it’s it’s a very tough uh uh condition to get over well it’s also because the lungs sweep themselves out I want you to the viewers to imagine the lung is a vacuum cleaning effect and when you got pneumonia it’s very difficult to get the the the gunk out of there and that’s it gets packed in and it’s hard to do that that’s what the nurses do around the clock there and I guarantee you he’s getting the best medical care anywhere in Italy the nurses don’t get enough credit for this John recovery from pneumonia is all about great nursing yeah well we we certainly wish him well as he continues to battle this uh you mentioned anti biotic so so that suggests that this is uh uh not uh there are the two kinds of pneumonia obviously uh bacterial and the other type which the Name Escapes Me Right for the moment but uh this sounds like it’s bacterial viral or bacterial viral correct viral or bacterial but the way this is with bilateral pneumonias the way this sounds I can’t prove this but I believe it’s probably bacterial and one more thing you use broadspectrum antibiotics I you want to use a shotgun here to get the the bacteria you don’t want to be too elegant so you use broadspectrum antibiotics to cover different possibilities and that tends to work that’s what I think is going on all right Dr Mark seagull thanks for the explanations we appreciate it