Pope Fran­cis’ med­ical team briefly con­sid­ered sus­pend­ing treat­ment af­ter a Feb. 28 breath­ing cri­sis but in­stead de­cid­ed on an ag­gres­sive course that put his or­gans at risk, the doc­tor co­or­di­nat­ing the pope’s hos­pi­tal care said in an in­ter­view pub­lished Tues­day.

Dr. Ser­gio Al­fieri said the 88-year-old pon­tiff and peo­ple close to him alike un­der­stood “that he might not sur­vive the night,’’ af­ter the bron­chospasm at­tack dur­ing which the pope in­haled vom­it.

“We need­ed to choose whether to stop and let him go, or to push it and at­tempt with all of the pos­si­ble drugs and the treat­ments, tak­ing the very high risk of dam­ag­ing oth­er or­gans,’’ Al­fieri told told the Mi­lan dai­ly Cor­riere del­la Sera. “In the end, that is the path we chose.”

Fran­cis was re­leased Sun­day af­ter 38 days of treat­ment for dou­ble pneu­mo­nia, un­der doc­tors’ or­ders to ob­serve two months of con­va­les­cence dur­ing which he should avoid large gath­er­ings. The pope ap­peared weak and frail when he greet­ed the crowd out­side the Gemel­li hos­pi­tal be­fore his dis­charge.

The Vat­i­can has said it is not clear if the pope will meet with King Charles III on a Vat­i­can state vis­it next month, or any Holy Week ac­tiv­i­ties lead­ing up to East­er on April 20.

Al­fieri said that the pope re­mained “alert’’ through­out the Feb. 28 or­deal and that his per­son­al health care as­sis­tant, Mas­si­m­il­iano Strap­pet­ti, “who knows per­fect­ly the pon­tiff’s wish­es,’’ urged them “to try every­thing. Don’t give up.”

Al­fieri ac­knowl­edged that the treat­ment risked dam­ag­ing the pope’s kid­neys and bone mar­row, “but we con­tin­ued, and his body re­spond­ed to the treat­ments and the lung in­fec­tion im­proved.’’

The med­ical bul­letin that night said that the pope had suf­fered a bron­chiospasm so se­vere that he in­haled vom­it “wors­en­ing his res­pi­ra­to­ry pic­ture.” Doc­tors used a non-in­va­sive as­pi­ra­tion to clear his air­ways.

Three days lat­er, in a sec­ond life-and-death cri­sis, the pope suf­fered a pair of acute bron­chiospasms episodes. Doc­tors used a cam­era tube with a de­vice to re­move mu­cus plus that yield­ed abun­dant se­cre­tions. The bul­letin em­pha­sized that the pope “al­ways re­mained alert, ori­ent­ed and col­lab­o­ra­tive.’’

Al­fieri said he be­lieved that prayers for the pope help keep him alive, some­thing that the doc­tor said is backed by sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture.

“In this case the whole world was pray­ing. I can say that twice the sit­u­a­tion was lost, and then it hap­pened like a mir­a­cle,’’ the doc­tor said, adding that “of course he was a very co­op­er­a­tive pa­tient.’