A 73-year-old resident from the Ashdod region who was hospitalized 100 days ago after her COVID-19 symptoms worsened, has been released.
“It is a medical miracle,” said Yonatan Edel, head of Internal Medicine Department B at Samson Assuta Ashdod Hospital, where Ludmilla Sorostan was treated. “We really did not think she was going to survive.”
Sorostan, a mother of two daughters, was first admitted in April with what appeared to be a moderate case of the illness, Edel said. But her situation quickly deteriorated. Eventually, she was intubated and ventilated and spent several months going back and forth between the COVID unit and the intensive care unit.
“She had a hole in her lung that was leaking under her skin,” the doctor described. “It was all very severe.”
Edel said the majority of older intubated patients do not make it out alive, and certainly not ones like Sorostan, who had underlying medical conditions and complications that led to abdominal surgery, among other procedures.
In one study referenced by the National Institutes of Health, 31 out of 32 COVID-19 patients who were intubated or received invasive mechanical ventilation support did not survive.
“She was very ill,” Edel said. “I was the one who took out the last tube a few days ago. She started speaking. It was quite amazing.”