ATWhen a third epidemic wave of Covid-19 hits France, several regions are very strongly affected by a massive influx of patients to hospitals. These patients are younger and have more severe forms of the disease than in the previous two waves, possibly due to the virulence of the new variants. For these reasons, the intensive care units are in high demand and again on the verge of saturation. Thursday, March 25, in Ile-de-France, the available resuscitation beds were torn off in a few minutes.
It is hoped that, in a few months, the growing proportion of people who have been vaccinated or have been infected will ultimately help curb the epidemic. In the meantime, in the absence of a sudden slowdown created by real confinement accompanied by collective awareness, health professionals are faced with a major problem: how to prevent the complete saturation of intensive care services in the days or days. coming weeks? Three options are available to us.
Transfer of patients, deprogramming of operations
The first is to transfer intensive care patients from areas of stress to less affected areas. Punctually effective during the first wave, this solution could only be implemented very marginally during this third wave, in particular because the patients are more severely affected and are therefore untransportable. In addition, their relatives have become extremely reluctant to these transfers, considering that they do not have to pay the cost of a health policy that they consider to be flawed. This did not prevent the government from over-publicizing these transfers. We have thus seen communicators fidgeting on airport tarmacs rather than tackling the real problem: the fate of our patients.
The second option is to open new resuscitation beds, called “ephemeral”. If the equipment exists, on the other hand, it is necessary to seek the nursing staff in other departments of the hospital, in particular by closing the operating theaters, and therefore by deprogramming operations. This is not without consequences: for each Covid patient treated for a fortnight in one of these “ephemeral” beds, it is estimated that around 150 patients will not be operated on. While some procedures can wait, others can wait less, such as heart surgery or cancer surgery.
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