A medical bulletin Thursday night described Arroyo’s condition as “stable but guarded” after he suffered what a doctor interpreted as a recurrence of aneurysm “in another part of the heart.” Malacañang said he was under “intense medical care.”
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo canceled all her scheduled engagements from morning to evening to stay close to her husband at St. Luke’s Medical Center-Global City in Taguig City.
“Let’s pray for the health and the recovery of the First Gentleman,” the President’s spokesperson, Ricardo Saludo, told reporters.
Mike Arroyo, 63, was brought to the hospital at around 8 a.m. after experiencing what was initially described as “back pains.”
“I understand that it’s serious. He’s in the ICU (intensive care unit). I want to go there and see him,” Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno told reporters in Makati City, where he had presided over the oath-taking of new commissioners of the National Police Commission.
Ms Arroyo accompanied her husband to the hospital and stayed with him throughout the day, Press Secretary Crispulo Icban Jr. said by phone.
Mike Arroyo had been undergoing regular therapy at St. Luke’s since he had a high-risk open-heart surgery in April 2007 after being diagnosed with a dissecting aortic aneurysm, a condition involving a tear in a major blood vessel. Four months earlier, he underwent a coronary angioplasty.
Blood pressure
Quoting cardiac surgeon Dr. Rommel Cariño, Icban said Thursday morning that the President’s husband developed a “redissection of the thoracic aorta and experienced back pains.”
Icban said the condition called for “intense medical care to control the blood pressure and heart rate to prevent further redissection.”
“A rupture can cause compression of the blood supply to various vital organs,” Icban quoted Cariño as saying.
He said Arroyo was placed under “continuous monitoring” in the hospital’s coronary care unit.
Another aneurysm
In a bulletin issued at around 7 p.m., Arroyo’s attending doctor, Juliet Gopez-Cervantes, said the President’s husband “developed a neuter in the thoracic aorta, beyond the previously repaired part, called redissection in medical terms.”
“This needs aggressive medical treatment to prevent further dissection, which can compromise the blood supply of other vital organs,” the bulletin said. “Right now, his condition is stable but guarded.”
The doctor did not entertain any questions from the media.
Another doctor, Glen Garcia, said that Arroyo “suffered another aneurysm in another part of his heart.”
“What the bulletin is saying is that the previous condition of (Arroyo) could have recurred in a different area,” said Garcia, an emergency medical consultant at the hospital’s emergency room.
Garcia said the doctors were still managing Arroyo’s condition with medicines as indicated in the bulletin and that the possibility of doing another surgery on him seemed not to be an option at this time, at least based on what the bulletin indicated.
On hearing about Arroyo’s illness, Liberal Party standard-bearer Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III said: “We should pray for everyone who is sick.”
Former President Joseph Estrada wished Arroyo “full recovery.”
Arroyo’s latest medical episode coincided with opposition attacks against the President’s supposed intention to hang on to power by getting herself elected to Congress so she would be in a position to become prime minister if the Philippines switched to a parliamentary system.
The attacks were bolstered by a bid by Ms Arroyo’s elder son, Rep. Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo, to become a party-list lawmaker—representing security guards—in the next Congress.
Other criticisms of Ms Arroyo centered around concerns—raised by her deputy spokesperson, Charito Planas, herself—that a military junta might take power if there was a failure of elections in May.
Mike Arroyo appeared jolly during Monday’s courtesy call on the President by Manny Pacquiao following the boxing champion’s return from his conquest of Ghanaian Joshua Clottey in Texas.
Saludo said he believed Arroyo’s illness was related to the old ailment.
Main blood vessel
“If you will recall, the First Gentleman had a condition some years back wherein he had to undergo a rather delicate operation and that condition also involved the thoracic aorta,” Saludo said at a press briefing.
“This is the main aorta or blood vessel coming out from the heart where oxygenated blood is pumped to the rest of the body. If that was the focus of an ailment then, it was corrected by surgery and this (latest ailment) is described as a redissection of the same aorta.”
Saludo said that Ms Arroyo and her three children—Mikey Arroyo, Rep. Diosdado “Dato” Arroyo and Luli Arroyo-Bernas—were at the hospital together Thursday night and that the President might stay there for the night.
Saludo could not say how Mike Arroyo’s illness would affect her attendance at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Vietnam on April 8-9.
“I’m sure the condition of the First Gentleman shall be a major consideration in the President’s own activities,” Saludo said.
Mike Arroyo’s health has been a source of family concern for some time.
In November 2008, a commercial jet carrying Ms Arroyo to an annual Asia-Pacific summit in Peru was forced to make an emergency landing in Japan after her husband suffered what the Palace later said were severe abdominal pains.
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