More covid-19 patients are surviving ventilators in the ICU
More covid-19 patients are surviving ventilators in the ICU
An increasing number of U.S. covid-19 patients are surviving after they are placed on mechanical ventilators, a last-resort measure that was perceived as a signal of impending death during the terrifying early days of the pandemic.
... We’ve learned a lot about covid since the beginning of the year,” said Russell G. Buhr, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. “That means we have a significantly better understanding of how to diagnose, recognize and manage this.”
Buhr’s hospital is still putting together data, but he said the mortality rate for ventilated patients is in the 30 percent to 50 percent range. That is about the same as the rate for people who develop acute respiratory distress syndrome, the dangerous buildup of fluid in the tiny air sacs of the lungs caused by diseases such as pneumonia, or injuries such as those suffered in car accidents.
... “This is a brand new disease we’d never seen before,” said Leora Horwitz, an associate professor of population health and medicine at NYU Langone Health. “We’re generally learning to recognize who needs to be intubated and who doesn’t. We’re avoiding intubation where we can. We’re learning proning,” the technique of placing patients on their stomachs to help them breathe. “We’re learning about blood clots.”
At the NYU hospital, 60 percent of patients placed on ventilators between March 1 and May 5 died, according to a paper Horwitz and others published in the BMJ medical journal.“It’s never going to be 10 to 20 percent. Let’s not kid ourselves,” Horwitz said. “The people who are sick enough to be put on ventilators, they’re really sick.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/more-covid-19-patients-are-surviving-ventilators-in-the-icu/2020/07/03/2e3c3534-bbca-11ea-8cf5-9c1b8d7f84c6_story.html
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