Thank you so much for sharing this. Hearing what the number one cause was for Jackson's death (in their opinion) got me rather excited. I have been a paramedic for 25 years, and I have always heard that Jackson died from pneumonia. I have never believed this. Jackson's symptoms were chest congestion, difficulty breathing and fever. Of course, pneumonia produces these same symptoms, so it is natural that it would be determined to be the cause, since pneumonia was known then. What was not known then was a condition called pulmonary embolus. This occurs frequently after a surgical procedure, where clotted blood from the surgery site breaks off into the bloodstream and lodges in the lungs, basically causing the patient to suffocate as the lungs are increasingly blocked. I have seen this countless times in my career. (It also will go into the brain and cause strokes). I have always felt that Jackson died of a pulmonary embolus, not pneumonia. Jackson lived for about a week after the surgery, which would be the right amount of time. Pulmonary Embolus usually takes several days to develop, and begins to cause problems in about a week after surgery, sometimes not until several weeks later. It begins as a slow process (like pneumonia), but once enough of the lung or lungs are compromised, the patient deteriorates rapidly. Now that I have heard that a group of physicians debated his death and came to this conclusion, it makes me feel better, somehow. The number two cause they guessed was sepsis. This is also quite possible and probable, since most patients then that died after surgery, died of "infection". What we now call "sepsis".
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