In the darkest period of the pandemic, between 14 March and 25 April 2020, when the health system was on the verge of collapse, and doctors were working beyond the conditions of human resistance, 13,840 patients were hospitalized for Covid in the coronavirus wards of all Lombard hospitals Senior citizens, with an age of over 70 years. They were about half (47 percent) of the 29,000 hospitalized. If you look instead at the terapie intensive, therefore the departments with the maximum intensity of assistance, those over 70 were 548 out of 2,457 (22 percent), therefore about one in five. Given that today in some areas of society there is the risk of forgetting what Covid was in Lombardy, and that is a massacre of weak or elderly people (who, beyond hospitals, died in retirement homes or in their homes), possible go back to the most dramatic season and understand for the first time in detail what the application of war medicine. The fact that the elderly were half of all hospitalized patients, but only one in five among those in intensive care, tells what were the consequences of the forced (and psychologically devastating) choices made by doctors in the wards: choosing to sacrifice those who had a lower chance of survival and a shorter life expectancy.
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He postpones
In comparison with the first phase (20 February-13 March 2020), when the health system was still partially addressing the disease with the normal criteria of assistance and evaluation of which patient needed to go to the wards with greater assistance, in the maximum pressure phase in hospitals (between 14 March and 25 April) the probability of being admitted to intensive care is approximately halved for patients over 70 years of age, and for this group of patients the time between admission to hospital and the move to intensive care (for those who later entered it). The analyzes are contained in a studio that the Courier service was able to preview, made by the referring doctors for Lombard hospitals, in collaboration with the Bruno Kessler Foundation, the Region, Bocconi University and researchers from two US universities (Indiana and Boston). And since age is not the only indicator in war medicine, just like for older patients – the report reads – during the phase of greatest pressure, patients with other pathologies had a much higher reduction in probability than others. to be admitted to intensive care.
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And give
This is the most complete and detailed analysis of what happened in the hospitals of the Region during the first wave (which in Lombardy alone caused almost 17,000 deaths). And it contains i data of all 43,538 patients who were hospitalized for Covid in those months, in which the pre-crisis availability of 720 beds in intensive care was multiplied in a few weeks, reaching 1,761 places, 78 percent of which (1,381) dedicated only to coronavirus patients. And the fact that even with that exceptional enlargement it was necessary to choose with such a wide frequency who to save and who to sacrifice, highlights more than any other number what the human and health disaster of those months was. A further element of comparison can be obtained by analyzing the data of the decline phase, i.e. from 26 April to 12 July, when the wards began to empty: and at that point the doctors returned to having the facilities available to try to save all the patients, without having to choose. In those months the relationship between the hospitalized and the sick in intensive care returned to align: the over 70 who enter the hospital are 1,707 out of 3,409, 50 percent, with a similar proportion to those who are welcomed in intensive care (46 over 70 out of 105 patients), 44 percent.
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24 October 2021 | 07:57
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