2023-05-19 11:33:24
Ventilation via intubation can save lives, but it also has side effects.
Image: Lucas Bäuml
Ventilators have saved many lives during the pandemic. Some doctors think their use was often careless, but others clearly disagree.
Zu At the beginning of the corona pandemic, there was a general fear that too few ventilators would soon be available. Because early use of this procedure was considered the best, if not the only way to protect patients with severe Covid 19 disease from a fatal course of infection. The high mortality of those affected in regions lacking intensive care unit beds seemed to confirm this assumption. Politicians themselves therefore called on the automotive industry to produce such devices.
At that time, however, there were already voices warning against premature mechanical ventilation of corona patients with pneumonia. One of them was Martin Tobin from the Department of Pneumology and Intensive Care Medicine at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Chicago: In a number of specialist articles, the pneumologist explained that intubation – the abbreviation for machine ventilation – does not add any value to those affected, but has the opposite effect. A pump presses air into the patient’s lungs via a plastic tube, a so-called tube, that is inserted into the trachea. The patient has to be put into an artificial coma to endure the procedure.
#intubation #unavoidable