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No longer putting everyone with a <95% blood oxygen level on ventilator. It's heartbreaking to read this article from three months ago (https://www.statnews.co
by TMWNN 6y ago
No longer putting everyone with a <95% blood oxygen level on ventilator.
It's heartbreaking to read this article from three months ago (https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-overused-for-covid-19/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/08/doctors-say-ventilators-...) and realize that everything those warning against overuse of ventilators turned out to be correct.
- microtherion 6y agoBut even among people who do go on ventilators, there has apparently been a massive improvement in death rates: https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1280889429100552192 https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1280889429100552192
- TMWNN 6y agoYes, because they're now the ones who really needed mechanical respiration in the first place. The earlier "putting everyone with a <95% blood oxygen level on ventilator" strategy harmed people by damaging healthy lungs via overoxygenation, and causing breathing dependence that doctors found difficult/impossible to wean from and all sorts of other complications, such as deep vein thrombosis. (This is what happened to Nick Cordero.)
- microtherion 6y agoYes, but presumably (1) that harm affects everybody put on ventilators and (2) those who are now put on ventilators are the most desperate cases, so better ventilator triage as such does not seem to explain the improvement in ventilated death rates to me (even though it may explain improvement in overall death rates).