occurring. so certainly lessons learned there that will be applied to transfers in the future. he transferred his authorities to the deputy secretary prior to undergoing general anesthesia? that s correct. whose decision not to alert the president that the defense secretary had prostate cancer? again, as far as the situation in terms of what the elective surgery was, and the secretary s condition, we are providing that information to you as we received it. we received that this afternoon and we are providing it to you now. so, i ll leave it there. clearly you didn t know, the chief of staff, did the chief of staff know? i m not going to go into the specifics on who specifically knew what, when and where. our review will help us better understand that, other than to
about this, and i want to tell our viewers we will keep listening, because this will likely come up again as we get to the q&a portion of the briefing. doctor reiner, just what you heard there. i mean we should be clear that there was an issue with a uti, and then a blocked intestine, or a backup as it was described in the statement. it must have been incredibly painful. we learned that during his stay, in this complication period, that the secretary never lost consciousness or never underwent general anesthesia. pardon me, let s go back to the pentagon briefing. reporter: do you suspect he might have to take a step back from some of the more rigorous parts of his job, such as a lot of the overseas travel that he s been doing, it may be delegated to secretary hicks? the staff has been in contact with the secretary. i have not personally spoken to the secretary, but i do know, for example, that he s in regular communication with his
january 2nd, decision made to transfer to icu for close monitoring and higher level of care. further evaluation revealed abdominal fluid collection impairing function of small intestine. a tube was placed through his nose to drain his stomach. abdominal fluid collections were drained by nonsurgical drain placement. he s progressed steadily throughout his stay. his infection has cleared. he continues to make progress and we anticipate a full recovery, although this can be a slow process. during the stay, secretary austin never lost anxiousness and never underwent general anesthesia. prostate cancer is the most common cause of cancer among american men, impacts one in every eight men and one in every six african american men during their lifetime. discussions about screening,
required a tube to be placed through his nose into his stomach to drain the fluid but he was never under general anesthesia. the statement also says his prognosis is excellent, he s expected to recover fully but there may be a long recovery period. sorry to interrupt you. i m readying the statement, too. it says he was under general anesthesia during this procedure. during the initial procedure, excuse me, on december 22nd, he was. forgive me. during the second time he s been in the hospital for the last eight days or so, he was not placed under general anesthesia. on december 22nd for the original procedure, he did transfer his authorities to deputy secretary kathleen hicks. that s been one of our big questions here. why was the decision made on tuesday, january 2nd, to transfer the authorities to kathleen hicks? what was the nature of his
apparently and we were hearing questions about this during the briefing, did not lose consciousness. he actually had a tube put in through his nose going into his stomach. it seems like it is not unusual for a nasogastric tube to be placed without general anesthesia, it is sort of a numbing spray, correct? having had one at some point in my life, i will tell you it is not a pleasant experience and one i hope never to repeat. his intestines were probably dysfunctional and probably distended, it is a way to decompress the intestinal circuit when it is not working. we learned some interesting things. secretary austin was described as a minimally evasive which was probably laparoscopic