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by adrianmonk
2288 days ago
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A few days back, there was a Reddit AMA ("Ask Me Anything") thread with a UK doctor who mentioned a similar situation in Italy. Here's the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fgfspi/im_a_cr... The doctor says: > Italy exceeded their critical care capacity days ago. ... > This is the first time I have seen guidelines in a first world country suggest that older patients (who have survivable illness) are not considered for intubation and ventilation in order to allow capacity to treat younger patients. It isn't clear that the situation got so bad that they actually needed to make these kinds of hard choices, but the thread links to a document with guidelines in case it's necessary. And apparently those guidelines do include considering age when choosing who not to treat, should such a situation arise. From a machine translation (the original is Italian) posted further down in that same thread: > Recommendations > *3. It may be necessary to place an age limit on entry into TI. It is not a question of making choices merely of value, but to reserve resources that could be very scarce for those who are primarily more likely to survival and secondarily to those who can have more years of life saved, with a view to maximizing of benefits for most people. |
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