The family of German motor-racing champion Michael Schumacher is at his bedside as he fights for life following a skiing accident in the French Alps.
Schumacher’s manager, Sabine Kehm, said his wife, Corinna, daughter Gina Maria and son Mick are in a state of shock at the Grenoble hospital.
The seven-time Formula 1 champion suffered head injuries on Sunday in a fall at the resort of Meribel.
He has been put in a medically-induced coma to relieve pressure on his brain.
“The family is not doing very well, obviously. They are shocked,” Sabine Kehm told reporters.
Prof Jean-Francois Payen, of Grenoble University Hospital’s intensive care unit, told a news conference that they could not give a prognosis for the 44-year-old driver.
“He is in a critical state in terms of cerebral resuscitation. We are working hour by hour,” he said.
Prof Payen said that if Schumacher had not been wearing a helmet “he wouldn’t be here now”.
“We had to operate urgently to release some pressure in his head,” the anaesthetist said.
Neurosurgeon Stephan Chabardes said that a post-operative scan had shown “diffuse haemorrhagic lesions” on both sides of Schumacher’s brain.
The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Grenoble says there are precedents for people surviving such injuries.
Induced comas can last several weeks while a patient’s condition is stabilised, she adds, and there can be many months of therapy in order to achieve as full a recovery as possible.
Doctors have lowered Schumacher’s body temperature to 34-35C (93.2-95F) as part of the coma, slowing his metabolism to help reduce inflammation.
The driver had been skiing off-piste with his teenage son when he fell and hit his head on a rock.
He was first evacuated to a hospital in the nearby town of Moutiers.
Prof Chabardes said the driver was in an “agitated condition” on arrival in Moutiers and his neurological condition “deteriorated rapidly”.
He was taken from Moutiers to the larger facility in Grenoble.
Messages of support have come from around the world.
Source-BBC
