Pandemic influenza will pose difficult choices for the use of mechanical ventilation
Plan aims to establish guidelines for screening before a crisis occurs. Of all the discussions on the risk of an influenza pandemic, little has been said about the difficult decisions to be made in a health crisis overwhelming. An article published in the February issue of Academic Emergency Medicine, the Official Journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, presents a sample of guidelines for prioritizing the use of a piece of equipment may be rare in cases of pandemic: mechanical fans.Drs John L. Hick and Daniel T. OLaughlin University of Minnesota, beat an operating concept and a set of proposed guidelines for the classification of mechanical ventilators in a pandemic or a bioterrorist attack. If a major pandemic occurs, simply run out of resources, comments
Dr Hick. We should now talk about how we scarce resources, the majority of patients who could benefit. OLaughlin Drs Hick and developed its proposal for a final exercise to show that an epidemic, the ten percent of the Minneapolis area would be affected, leading to a rapid and critical gap in the supply of mechanical ventilators.Despite an increase bed capacity in the region of 2500-3500, there were 16 fans are in our regional system, says Dr. Hicks.The proposal includes a number of general guidelines in advance by a team of health officials and medical experts. The guidelines are subject to review by a separate group, including elected officials and members of the public. The guidelines are arranged in layers - the resources are exhausted, another group that come the more
stringent criteria in force. At each level are the criteria on clinical indicators of patients and the survival and the expected use of health resources based on scarce resources to patients most likely to benefit directly.In a crisis, the guidelines quickly adapt to the specific situation, then issued as part of an emergency order. The aim would be to promote consistency between hospitals and regions, says Dr.
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