Cautious Optimism On Giffords' Recovery

(CBS) - Congresswoman Giffords remains in a medically induced coma in a Tucson hospital. Doctors are cautiously optimistic because she was able to respond, nonverbally, to simple commands. However, I think the only thing you can say with any sense of certainty is that you cannot predict how Congresswoman Giffords will do in the long run.

She had a wound that went straight through the left side of her brain from the back to the front. There's a great deal of damage. Certainly, they did not remove a lot of bone fragments and brain tissue. What they did was they removed half the skull so that when swelling occurs, as it will, it will not have pressure on the brain to such a large extent, which is very important.

Everything they are doing right now is trying to preserve as much brain tissue as they can, and we'll be measuring this in weeks and months, not days.

Reported by Dr. Brian McDonough, KYW Newsradio