[ad_1]
24 hours after the assurances of the emergency commissioner Domenico Arcuri, the denial comes on time. “It is claimed that the pressure on intensive care is sustainable but in reality in the red zone the pressure is almost unbearable and in the oranges it is very, very strong. To argue that 10,000 ventilators can guarantee a sufficient margin to sustain this exponential growth in ICU admissions means thinking that knowing how to turn on a ventilator is enough to save a life. Unfortunately this is not the case“he says in a video message transmitted to Agora, in Rai Tre, Antonio Giarratano, president Siaarti (Italian Society of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care). In short, the pressure on intensive therapy there is and it weighs a lot. And the resuscitators are not: they let the optimism of the super commissioner escape.
Arcuri’s “accused” statements
Following the data in the November 16 bulletin, Arcuri had tried to moderate the climate of concern. “In Germany in March there were 30,000 intensive care places, six times more than in Italy, where there were 5,000; At the peak we had about 7,000 patients in intensive care in our country, two thousand more than the total capacity of the wards. Today we have about 10,000 ICU places and we will reach 11,300 in the next month. There are currently around 3300 ICU patients, so there is no pressure on these rooms“explains, as reported Ansa, the Covid emergency commissioner Domenico Arcuri at the “Finance and National System One Year After” conference at the Digital Finance Community Week. But according to Arcuri, the difficulties of the health system are due to the exceptional extent of the pandemic. “The coronavirus – he adds – represents the great emergency of the last 70 years: the virus has hit 1 in 51 citizens and caused more than 45,000 deaths. They are impressive figures. The emergency has exposed the fragility of the system, but it has also highlighted extraordinary capabilities that are often unknown and unexpected.“.
Crisanti’s lunge and the paradox of intensive care
The director of microbiology and virology of the University of Padua Andrea Crisanti There is not much left to say your opinion on the “unfocused” statements of Commissioner Arcuri, according to which intensive care is now not under pressure. “A place of intensive care – thunders the virologist in Agora – is not created simply by turning on a fan. There is a whole structure behind this, there are skills that are difficult to multiply. Why not multiply the beds without using nurses and rescuers? A rescuer takes years to train, and the more beds they follow, the more difficult it will be to treat patientsAnd, furthermore, according to Professor Crisanti, not always, “paradoxically”, increasing the places in resuscitation is an advantage: “The more additional places are created in intensive care, the less pressure there is and the more the virus spreads”. By doing so, at the end of the pandemic, it will be discovered that the regions with more places in resuscitation will have caused more deaths.
“New places: but who will care for these patients?”
Federico Gelli, president of the Italia en Salud Foundation, also responds to Arcuri’s words on intensive care: “As the same anesthetist resuscitators repeat several times, a single ventilator is not enough to do an intensive care post. That said, it is also impossible to ignore the employment rate of non-Covid patients present in those rooms. The other pathologies did not disappear by magic“And, in line with the paradox raised by Crisanti, he points out that the activation of some 11 thousand Beds create a problem: “Who will care for those patients given the shortage of specialists?“.
“The situation is worse than in March”
Also for Alessandro Vergallo, president of the association of anesthetists Aaroi-Emac, the accounts do not add up. “There are no concrete data – he explained to the AGI -, the figures we have are those that are officially communicated. We do not know how many people die in intensive care and how many go out. A snapshot of the ICU should be taken at any given timeMeanwhile, the feeling is that “the pressure is the same as in the first wave.” And given the reassuring statements of Commissioner Arcuri who guarantees more than 10,000 places in intensive care, he does not beat around the bush ”.The truth is that in many regions the alarm threshold for intensive care has been exceeded with more than 40% of Covid hospitalized. And if on paper 10 medical beds become intensive care places, then we do not agree. It is not solved by placing a fan in front of a bed“thundered the president of Aaroi.
Not only that, for Vergallo the situation would be even worse than that of first wave: “The burden in intensive care is the same, which in hospitalization is even higher and this is because many patients who come to the emergency room have a condition that should be treated at home. The positive is that this makes it possible to act earlier and the treatments are anticipated, the negative is that the burden increases because many patients go to the hospital because there is no local medicine.“.
