ReportageTo open new resuscitation beds, French hospitals are forced to close operating theaters. In Lyon Sud, between 70% to 80% of the surgery is canceled, even affecting the operations of patients with cancer. Each week, practitioners prioritize interventions, striving to limit “loss of opportunity”.
“At what point do we block to say that we cannot descend yet? Because below, we no longer know how to do, we have to get the message across! ” The question, which is not really one, is dropped by Professor Alain Ruffion, head of the urology service. The climate may well be friendly between practitioners who know each other well, it is nonetheless tense this Tuesday, April 13, during the “council of wise men” which brings together each week ten surgeons representing the different specialties of the hospital. Lyon Sud, as well as anesthetists and health executives.
Their mission: to prioritize the operations of patients in the days to come and to arbitrate between emergencies. “Surgeons are a little bloody people, recognizes a doctor between two doors. But here, nobody is fighting, everyone is very united, even if each one has their imperatives. “
In an Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region hit hard by the third epidemic wave, with an acceleration in the influx of Covid-19 patients in intensive care since the beginning of April (they were 500 at the end of March, they are 682 to April 13), the equation becomes more and more complex. In the large hospital center anchored to the south of the metropolis, one of the main sites of the Hospices Civils de Lyon (HCL), we have to share 5 operating theaters, compared to 23 in normal times, and two emergency rooms. Almost the extreme level where the hospital, which has become “all Covid”, had to descend in the spring of 2020.
The setting up of this weekly meeting of the “council of the wise” dates from this first crisis. On the third floor of the “surgical pavilion” planted on the 80 hectare university hospital campus, Professor Ruffion does not mince his words. “We must apply increasingly stringent selection criteria, we are falling behind even with cancers,” underlines the 52-year-old man. This week, I had to postpone bladder cancer, I took the less serious, it’s going to be fine if it’s only for a week, but you’re never sure for the next week. ”
He, like other surgeons, reminds us: “It’s been a year since it lasts, we are starting again as in the first wave, but the situation is much worse. “ Since the start of the Covid-19 epidemic, surgical activity has never been able to resume at its normal pace. For the past five months, after the particularly virulent wave of November 2020 in the region, the blocks of Lyon Sud have run at a maximum of two-thirds of their usual activity, before having to reduce the sails again.
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