Verdun does not distance itself much from the paediatricians of half of Italy in the highly stressed situation of the health structures responsible for childhood, for some weeks now under the crossfire of seasonal flu and the various forms of viruses that have decimated the presences in the nursery and primary schools.
If a worrying spread of the syncytial virus (read here), which mainly affects younger children, from the seventh floor of thesingle hospital in Alba and Bra the primary Alexander Vigo confirms that the effects of “a very high viral circulation, which also includes viruses that are very different from each other”.
Then the calculations are made “with Covid, with the same syncytial virus, but also with adenovirus and with all the viruses that normally occur in the winter months. Then, as always happens when it is present high viral circulation and the immune system is lowered, someone is affected by bacterial over-infectionsfor which it is necessary to use antibiotics”.
Normal that the influx of patients arriving these days at pediatric emergency room as well as to the ward itself (the Pediatrics structure is still part of the neonatal center) has undergone a significant increase in this period.
Vigo again: “Of course yes, these days the influx is decidedly important. And as regards only the emergency room such as to contribute significantly to the several thousand accesses that we register annually. Let’s say that we had prepared plenty of time trying to optimize the organization of the response even with all the things that can benefit us from a diagnostic point of view. Then the shortage of hospital doctors in general and pediatricians in particular is known, and this doesn’t help. But we still manage to meet the requests, in the best possible way”.
Valuable in this key is the use of some “tokenists“, collaborators external to the staff, including some retired doctors of the department, now committed to providing support to four doctors and the two trainees currently employed alongside the head physician himself.
In the meantime, the occupation of the 10 beds available in the department travels on averages that are always close to 100%: “Whati – warns Dr. Vigo – however, it must be taken into account that they are reserved for all pathologies, not only acute ones but also chronic patients, obviously. We are able to respond to everyone’s needs also because we train to keep a high turnover, thus managing to respond to all needs”.
“In the years of Covid – explains the director of Pediatrics in conclusion – accesses had decreased significantly, as had all acute accesses in the hospital. This is also due to the greater attention to the prevention rules that avoid the spread of infectious diseases, obviously linked to the presence of Covid. In practice, prevention against the pandemic has thus been accompanied by a sharp decline in seasonal diseases. In this autumn those attentions disappeared and the results are evident.
With the non-trivial complication that together with seasonal influences there is now also Covid itself. The result is that of clinical pictures which in some cases are also quite demanding, with respiratory pathologies which may require the use of ventilatory support, even if not invasive, as is happening for some of our young patients. These are complicated situations from the point of view of care but above all for the patient, especially as we are talking about children”.
