Republican Sen. John McCain’s recovery time from a surgery to remove a two-inch blood clot above his left eye Friday looks like it will take longer than medical professionals originally anticipated.
His health threatens to once again push back the vote on the Republican leadership’s bill to repeal major portions of Obamacare.
The 80-year-old Arizona senator’s return to Washington could get delayed by at least one or two weeks, medical experts told The New York Times Sunday.
“The recovery time from a craniotomy is usually a few weeks,” Dr. Nrupen Baxi, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, told reporters.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Saturday evening that the Senate would delay its vote on the repeal bill until after McCain returned to Washington.
McCain’s office released a statement Saturday, which hinted the senator would only need this week to recover from the operation. The surgeons at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix, the hospital that performed McCain’s operation, are not conducting interviews regarding the surgery, McCain’s recovery, or the cause of the clot.
Blood clots in the cranial region can stem from an acute hit to the head, a stroke or brain damages linked to aging.
McCain has a history of an aggressive form of skin cancer known as a melanoma, which can easily spread to the brain and cause bleeding. The pathology reports from McCain’s physicians have yet to be released, so no one knows for certain what caused the bleeding.
Brain hematomas can take weeks or even months to develop, and can cause little to no symptoms.
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