Taipei Deputy Mayor Tsai Ping-kun (蔡炳坤) was admitted to an intensive care unit after surgery for a hemorrhagic stroke, Taipei City Hospital said yesterday.
Tsai arrived at an emergency room in an ambulance at 7:49pm on Monday, said Lin Chih-lin (林志陵), deputy superintendent of the hospital’s Renai branch, adding that Tsai was unconscious and had high blood pressure when he arrived.
“We performed an emergency computed tomography scan on his brain and other examinations, which found massive bleeding on the right side of the brain and midline shift,” Lin said.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei City Government
An emergency craniotomy was performed to remove blood clots, an external ventricular drain was inserted to monitor intracranial pressure, after which Tsai was admitted to an intensive care unit for further treatment and observation, Lin said.
The hospital has established a medical team to take care of Tsai, whose vital signs were stable yesterday, he said, adding that as Tsai continues to receive sedative treatment, the upcoming week is a critical observation period.
The team would continue to monitor the deputy mayor’s condition, he said.
Lin Wen-hsiung (林文雄), a neurosurgeon at the hospital, said that the surgery took about one-and-a-half hours and Tsai was in a deep coma.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Monday said that he was at a dinner event with Tsai and Taichung city councilors at a hotel in Taipei when Tsai suddenly fell at about 7:20pm.
He gave instructions to call an ambulance, assessing that Tsai had likely had a stroke, said Ko, who is a doctor.
Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) — who is expected to run for mayor this year with Ko nearing the end of his second term — was asked by reporters yesterday whether Tsai’s condition would affect the city’s administration.
She said that there are capable people to maintain city government operations, so there is no immediate concern regarding administrative matters.
Earlier on Facebook she wrote that Tsai spends long hours in his role for the city and expressed hope that they would be able to work together again soon.
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS