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Thousands of intensive care beds had to be dismantled last year - due to a lack of staff

2021-11-09T15:44:53.773Z


Seriously ill corona patients must be cared for in clinics. But there is a lack of staff for more and more intensive care beds with ventilation function.


Seriously ill corona patients must be cared for in clinics.

But there is a lack of staff for more and more intensive care beds with ventilation function.

The Corona hospital traffic light is red in large parts of Germany. More and more people are currently infected with Covid-19, which in many cases only causes harmless cold symptoms. However, a coronavirus infection does not always take an easy course.

People who are already immunocompromised, such as the elderly or people with autoimmune diseases, run the risk of becoming seriously ill

. In some cases a hospital stay is even necessary. In Germany, so-called corona stations were set up in clinics as part of the corona pandemic. Intensive care beds are also available on these, in which Covid patients can be invasively ventilated.

But the number of these special beds has been reduced within the last nine months, as the Ärzteblatt informs.

According to the report, there are currently 9,000 beds in German clinics that make invasive ventilation possible.

Nine months ago it would have been 12,000, they say.

As Christian Karagiannidis, the scientific director of the DIVI intensive care register, explained to the Ärzteblatt, the lack of nurses in intensive care units is responsible for this.

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Free intensive care beds could soon be in short supply.

(Archive image)

© Christoph Reichwein / Imago

The intensive care beds might not be enough for children with severe Covid

How the intensive care bed utilization by corona patients will develop in the coming weeks and months, nobody can predict with certainty.

But there are already model calculations.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), mathematician Andreas Schuppert from RWTH Aachen and intensive care physician Christian Karagiannidis calculated how the situation in intensive care units could develop in the next few weeks.

In the best case, the calculation results show 3,500 Covid intensive care patients within the next few weeks

, according to the result.

However, only under the condition that the "infection process is suddenly slowed down", according to the SZ.

Against this background, it is not unlikely that intensive care units in Germany will reach their limits in the coming weeks and months.

In addition, the pronounced shortage of intensive care nurses affects not only adult medicine, but also paediatrics.

"That is why many pediatric intensive care beds will not be operable," said Karagiannidis according to the Ärzteblatt:

"That really worries me".

He sees the mask requirement for children as a sensible way to protect them from infection.

(jg)

List of rubric lists: © Christoph Reichwein (CREI) via www.imago-images.de

Source: merkur

All life articles on 2021-11-09

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