Houston, Texas - US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords will be moved to a rehabilitation facility on Wednesday morning after doctors upgraded her condition from serious to good, according to the hospital overseeing the Arizona congresswoman's recovery.
Memorial Hermann Texas Medical Center Hospital said her doctors had determined she was ready to move to TIRR Memorial Hermann, another facility at the hospital where her rehabilitation will begin. That transfer was scheduled for Wednesday morning, pending a review of her condition, according to a statement released on Tuesday night.
Giffords had been kept in intensive care since her arrival on Friday at the Houston hospital from Tucson, where she had been in hospital since the January 8 shooting. Doctors in Texas said she had been given a tube to drain excess cerebrospinal fluid.
Everybody makes such fluid, but an injury can cause the fluid to not be cleared away as rapidly as normal. A back-up can cause pressure and swelling within the brain.
Giffords was was shot in the forehead while meeting with constituents outside a Tucson, Arizona, supermarket in the rampage that killed six people and injured 12 others.
The assassination attempt cast a sombre mood over president Barack Obama's State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, where many lawmakers in both parties wore black-and-white lapel ribbons to signify the deaths and the hopes of the survivors. Giffords' husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, watched the speech from her bedside in Texas, as he held her hand.
The 22-year-old suspect in the shootings, Jared Loughner, pleaded not guilty on Monday to federal charges of trying to assassinate the congresswoman and two of her aides. He also faces federal murder charges in the deaths of a federal judge and a Giffords aide, and more charges are expected. - Sapa-AP