Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will undergo another operation Thursday to “minimize the risk of future bleeding” in an area under his skull that received emergency surgery this week, his doctor said.
The 79-year-old president’s doctor, Roberto Kalil, told journalists on Wednesday outside the Hospital Sirio-Libanes where Lula is convalescing that the procedure was an “expected” follow-up to the surgery carried out on Tuesday.
He said Thursday’s operation, estimated to last an hour, would involve inserting a catheter in Lula’s femoral artery, and added that the procedure was “relatively simple and low-risk.”
The hospital said in a medical bulletin: “As part of his treatment, complementary to the surgery, an endovascular procedure (embolization of the middle meningeal artery) will be carried out tomorrow morning.”
The facility added that Lula was otherwise well.
On Wednesday, it said, he “carried out physiotherapy, walked and received family visits.”
Doctors performed emergency surgery Tuesday on Lula to relieve pressure on his brain from bleeding in cranial membranes linked to a fall he had in October, in a bathroom at the presidential residence.
After complaining of a headache in Brasilia on Monday, an MRI scan found a hemorrhage between his brain and the dura mater membrane that protects it.
He was rushed to the Hospital Sirio-Libanes — the country’s top medical facility — where doctors carried out a trepanation, involving drilling through his skull to relieve pressure.
Earlier Wednesday, the hospital said Lula was alert and had “progressed well” since the surgery, “without incident.”
In a post-surgery news conference on Tuesday, his medical team said he had suffered no brain damage.
They said he would spend a couple of days in intensive care, under observation, and he was expected to be released from hospital next week.
After suffering his fall on October 19, Lula told an official from his Workers’ Party that the accident had been “serious”.
In the weeks following, the president skipped planned overseas trips. But from mid-November he resumed his active schedule, hosting a G20 summit in Rio and attending a Mercosur summit last week in Uruguay.
