Bautista to fly back home within 24 hours after suffering small complications
The Spanish media has published various reports over the last few days, indicating that there have been some small complications after the surgery Alvaro Bautista had on Saturday to fix the broken femur he suffered in the huge crash during practice for the Qatar Grand Prix last Friday.
However, bearing in mind the often slightly sensationalist approach of the media and comparing those reports with the official statements about Bautista’s physical condition and Twitter updates from the Rizla Suzuki rider himself, it is not quite clear how problematic these complications really are.
What seems to be sure at this point is that Alvaro had to undergo a second surgery yesterday to close up a drainage wound which had been opened during the initial surgery where a nail was inserted to fix the fracture.
While Alvaro is being treated at the Hamad Medical Corporation Hospital in Doha, updates have been regularly sent to his main attending physician Dr. Villamor in Madrid, who helped to advice the local doctors on Alvaro’s treatment and will immediately take over once Alvaro is back in Spain.
Motociclismo‘s José G. Maroto reported in an article published today that Dr. Villamor himself had told the magazine about the complications leading up to this second surgery. This is the text Dr. Villamor sent to Maroto:
“On Friday [after the crash] Álvaro wanted to come to Madrid to undergo surgery in San José. I talked to the doctors, they sent me the X-Ray which showed a fracture of the third middle diaphyseal of the femur. The team boss explained that it would take three days to get a plane medicalized and even though they told Alvaro they can wait for the transfer, they finally decided to operate there.
On Saturday they put in an interlocking intramedullary nail which is the most used technique in these cases. They sent me the X-Rays. But on Sunday the physical therapist said he [Alvaro] can not start to walk, because he has an incision along the entire length of the thigh that they opened, which they told us later they did during the operation because he had a lot of inflammation and they feared an acute compartment syndrome. Because of this they decided to leave it open and today (Monday) they decided to put him in surgery to close the wound, but apparently they didn’t do that and he got to his room with an open drainage [drenaje espirativo].*
Alvaro is well, with pain and low levels of hemoglobin. It seems that on Tuesday or Wednesday they will have a medical plane to bring him to Madrid and we will assess another surgery to find the possible source of the significant hematoma and to close the wound.”
Based on this information the magazine assumes the recovery period might be prolonged due to the complications.
As of this moment however, nobody knows how long the actual recovery period for Alvaro might be. Previously voiced assumptions by journalists and experts within the paddock are based on similar injuries people have quickly recovered from in the past, seeing Alvaro return as early as the French Grand Prix, generally estimating a recovery period of 6 to 10 weeks. But only once he’s back in Madrid and underwent a possible third surgery to fix the haematoma problem we can expect an educated guess from Dr. Villamor on how long it might take Alvaro to fully recover.
We’re keeping our fingers crossed it won’t be long.
Sources: Motociclismo, as.com, Rizla Suzuki MotoGP, Twitter Alvaro Bautista
Screenshot: TVE News
*This might not be the correct medical term. The original Spanish wording is “drenaje espirativo” which could mean an open drainage.
