Faced with an onslaught of patients, doctors are having to decide how to maximise limited resources
, who came up with the system of triage. On the battlefield Larrey, who tended to the wounded at the battle of Waterloo, had to determine which soldiers needed medical attention most urgently, regardless of their military rank. In doing so he came up with the concept of distinguishing between urgent and non-urgent patients. Triage, from the FrenchYet most doctors today have rarely been in battlefield conditions. The covid-19 pandemic has changed that.
Take the shortage of ventilators. Many patients hospitalised with covid-19 will need one eventually. Provide it too early, and someone else does without. When it is truly needed, though, it will be needed quickly. A paper in thesays that when ventilators are withdrawn from patients dependent on them, they will “die within minutes”.
Ventilation is actually hard for the body to take. It is difficult for older patients to survive on it for two or three weeks—the length of time it would take for them to recover from covid-19. In ordinary situations, an effort would be made to keep the patient alive until it becomes obviously futile. In some hospitals that is no longer possible.
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