Covid-19, in Switzerland, stop to intensive care for the elderly: the reason is to be found in the difficulty of the health system which is heavily overcrowded
The emergency of the coronavirus pandemic in Europe returns and hospitals are once again collapsing. The contagion curve is reaching new records, not even touched last winter and which are attracting the attention of various governments. In Italy we are now close to 20,000 positives per day, the France is almost double and also the Germany he’s not doing well anymore. But there are new realities in great crisis like the Switzerland. After having resisted the first wave well, now it is faced with thousands of daily infections. Only yesterday they were recorded 6,592, with a total of 10 deaths. If we consider the ratio with respect to the inhabitants, we have numbers higher than Italy and Austria. A criticality that the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and the Swiss Society of Intensive Medicine he decided to deal with a rather awkward but necessary decision. From last March 20in fact, a health protocol is in force which envisages not treating elderly people suffering from ICU Covid-19. One way not to overload and block access to other seriously ill patients.
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Covid-19, in Switzerland stop to intensive care for the elderly: access to other seriously ill patients must be safeguarded
The document reads verbatim: “With the unavailability of beds in intensive care, no cardiopulmonary resuscitation should be done to some groups of Covid patients“.
Specifically, reference is made to “people over 85 years of age or over 75 but with the following pathogies: liver cirrhosis, chronic renal failure stage III, NYHA class heart failure greater than 1 and estimated survival less than 24 months“.
As established by the Swiss medical and scientific authorities to have access to the care of Intensive care they will be only the most severe patients. This category includes those who have “A recurrent cardiac arrest, oncological disease with a life expectancy of less than 12 months, severe dementia, NYHA class IV heart failure, end-stage degenerative disease“. All this only in the case of hospitals with overcrowding and limited resources, conditions that have not yet occurred. An emergency situation to be taken into account in the future, considering a further worsening of the pandemic. A similar thing had unfortunately also happened in Italy, a Bergamo, during the peak last March, when there were not enough places to treat all the sick people.
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