Rome: Pope Francis suffered two new acute respiratory crises Monday and was put back on noninvasive mechanical ventilation, in another setback to his battle to fight pneumonia, the Vatican said.

Doctors extracted “copious” amounts of mucus from his lungs during two bronchoscopies, in which a camera-tipped tube was sent down into his airways with a sucker at the tip to suction out fluid. The Vatican said the mucus was his body’s reaction to the original pneumonia infection and not a new infection, given laboratory tests don’t indicate any new bacteria.

Francis remained alert, oriented and cooperated with medical personnel. The prognosis remained guarded. Doctors didn’t say if he remained in stable condition, though they referred to the crises in the past tense, suggesting they were over.

The crises were a new setback in what has become a more than two-week battle by the 88-year-old pope, who has chronic lung disease and had part of one lung removed, to overcome a complex respiratory infection.

Dr. John Coleman, a pulmonary critical care doctor at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said the episodes were more concerning than the last one on Friday, in which Francis had a coughing fit, inhaled some vomit that needed to be extracted and then was put on the noninvasive mechanical ventilation for a day and then didn’t need it........

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