Michael Jackson’s former personal physician, Dr.Conrad Murray, could have taken a radically different approach to
Jackson’s addiction to powerful narcotics and possibly prevented the
tragic outcome for the King of Pop. Murray, a Houston-based physician
at the center of a death investigation that has now become a homicide
investigation, could have enlisted medical professionals to treat
Jackson’s obvious dependence.
“What
I’ve heard, he states that he was trying to wean [Jackson] or reduce
his addiction to the medication [Propofol]. That usually requires a
team approach – an addiction specialist, a psychiatry team, someone to
counsel them,” says Dr. Maurice Gilbert, an anesthesiologist at Atlanta
Medical Center. “You have to have some type of in-patient setting. It’s
done over time. And it’s done with a mixture of specialists, trained in
different areas to try to get that person free of their addiction.
That’s not something that you can do rather quickly.”
The
Los Angeles Coroner’s office concludes that Murray breached ethical and
legal parameters when he administered a dangerous cocktail of potent
medication just hours before Jackson’s death.
Dr.
Earl Stephenson, a board certified plastic surgeon in Loganville, Ga.,
says there are multiple procedures and precautions taken to ensure a
patient’s safety when administering Propofol before surgery. “At that
point, they hook up appropriate monitoring. Meaning they hook up a
blood-pressure monitor, a heart monitor, and sometimes a kidney monitor
in the form of a catheter,” says Stephenson, a former oral surgeon.
“And sometimes they do a conscious monitor … to make sure that you
are asleep and have enough medication to keep you asleep. And, then
obviously when you have a loss of consciousness they may have to
breathe for you, so they put you on a machine that keeps your lungs
with air.”
Propofol is so powerful it is
normally only used in a controlled setting by board certified medical
personnel, Gilbert says. “I cannot think of any reasonable situation
where you would take those drugs which are used in a [hospital] setting
and use them in a home setting. They are not designed for that,” he
says. “They require being able to manage the complications that occur
with that. … I cannot see any reasonable situation that this would be
something that would be utilized in a home setting.” – terry shropshire
