Slim chance of Tito recovery

Press, 22 February 1980, Page 6

Slim chance of Tito recovery

NZPA-Reuter ... Belgrade President Tito might stand * chance of recovery if he can survive his next two weeks in hospital, medical sources have said. But the chances of the 87-year-old Yugoslav leader appeared slim, they said, and there -seemed no prospect that he could recover sufficiently to resume all of his official duties. Marshal Tito’s own medical panel said he had spent a peaceful night and felt better. They said in a brief medical bulletin that in spite of that they saw no change in his grave condition. “Measures , of intensive treatment are being continued,’' the doctors said in what was widely thought to be veiled word that Tito was using an arificial kidney machine. ■ ' Marshal Tito, leader of Yugoslavia for more than 3 decades, had been. recovering from the January 20 ampuuation of his left leg when heart and kidney problems developed unexpectedly, earlier this month. He has been in hospital for 40 days.

Medical sources claiming access only to the little information made public about Marshak Tito’s problems said successful progress through the next two weeks might indicate that Marshal Tito was not suffering from a combination of kidney and heart failure. Such a combination, they said, would be self-aggrava-ting and inevitably fatal. If Marshal Tito were sufsuffering only from kidney failure, they said, there was a chance he could survive with the aid of a dialysis machine to periodically take over the kidneys’ function of cleaning body wastes from his blood. If Marshall Tito were suffering from a post-operative chemical imbalance which had shocked his kidneys, he could even recover lost kidney functions, they said, adding that this third prospect seemed highly unlikely. Marshal Tito was originally admitted to the Ljubljana clinical centre in Slovenia for what appeared to be a blood vessel by-pass operation to relieve , a circulation blockage in his lower left leg.