They are essential to save critical cases of coronavirus in intensive care. As hospitals are increasingly overcrowded, health officials are doing everything possible to avoid the shortage of respirators.
In France, almost 10% of patients affected by the coronavirus present respiratory distress and are placed in intensive care. There, a single device allows patients to be kept alive: the respirator, more necessary than ever in the middle of a Covid-19 pandemic.
How do they work?
When the lungs are failing, medical personnel use what is called “artificial ventilation”, which supports the patient’s natural and “spontaneous” ventilation. The respirator oxygenates the lungs of patients, so as to compensate for the lack of autonomy. Without respirators, the chances of survival for a patient in intensive care are almost zero.
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If we decide to intubate the patient, the doctor will introduce an intubation probe into his trachea. The probe is then connected to the ventilator and medical staff can adjust the frequency at which they send air and oxygen to the patient’s lungs. A sedation product can be administered to the patient if necessary.
Professor Sarath Ranganathan, a member of the Lung Foundation in Australia, explained that a patient who requires a respirator should be intubated within half an hour if the case is critical.
Manufacturers out of stock
Faced with the coronavirus pandemic, manufacturers around the world are drowning in requests for respirators … requests that they unfortunately can not honor, while many are found to be out of stock. “The reason we are in crisis is that without the respirators, patients will die,” Professor David Story, deputy director of the University of Melbourne Center for Intensive Care, told the Guardian.
In France there are around 30,000 respirators but the patients who benefit from them need them in the vast majority of cases for several days, even weeks.
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