Age is not a criterion by which one can decide whether or not to admit a Covid-19 patient to intensive care care, but must be considered in the context of a global clinical evaluation of the patient.
This is specified in the document 'Decisions for intensive care in case of disproportion between care needs and available resources during the Covid-19 pandemic' of the Italian Society of Anesthesia Analgesia Resuscitation and Intensive Care (Siaarti) and the Italian Society of Forensic Medicine and Insurance (Simla), published on the website of the Higher Institute of Health.
The evaluation of the case, he explains, "will have to proceed based on the global evaluation of each single sick person, evaluating as parameters the number and type of other pathologies present, the previous functional state and fragility relevant to the response to treatment, the severity of the clinical picture current, the presumed impact of intensive treatments, also in consideration of the patient's age, and finally the will of the sick person regarding intensive care, which should be investigated as soon as possible in the initial phase of triage ". The order of arrival and the draw are excluded from the triage criteria as they are not ethically sustainable. Age must be "considered in the context of the global assessment of the sick person" and not on the basis of predefined thresholds. Only under the same conditions, concludes the document, "the personal data can play a role in the global evaluation of the sick person, as with increasing age the probability of responding to intensive care decreases".
