Dr. Siegel on Pope’s Condition: Sepsis Is the ‘Main Danger,’ But Stability Is a Good Sign

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
Scott: “The good news is they say 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. His doctors are saying that sepsis is one of the big dangers here. Explain to us how that works, what that’s all about.”
SIEGEL: “And that would be the main danger, in my opinion, Jon, that plus respiratory failure. Again, does he continue to breathe on his own without assistance? 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 happened yet because a lot of 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.”