UK COVID-19 Patients Dying Needlessly Due to Unfounded Fears A | COVID-19 Up
UK COVID-19 Patients Dying Needlessly Due to Unfounded Fears About Ventilators
@COVID19Up: Critically ill COVID patients are dying unnecessarily because they are refusing to go on ventilators due to unfounded fears that the machines increase the risk of death, senior doctors have warned.
The Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine has seen an increase in patients wrongly believing that the devices will kill them.
The misconception appears to stem from the fact the death rate in ICUs has fallen at the same time as doctors have reduced their use of ventilators, which can take over the body’s breathing process when disease has caused the lungs to fail.
The machines were routinely used during the spring peak of the pandemic when death rates in ICUs were high. According to the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre, 75.9% of COVID patients were intubated within a day of arriving in ICU before the peak of first wave hospital admissions on April 1 last year.
This figure fell to 44.1% after the peak, coinciding with improved survival rates for COVID patients as the chances of dying in ICU dropped from 43% to 34% around the same time. SOURCE
