The Covid situation in their houses is currently to be managed, explain representatives of the two hospitals in Wolfratshausen and Bad Tölz.
The terms “great concern” and “great caution are advised” are also used.
Bad Tölz / Wolfratshausen -
The clinics in the district now have experience with the treatment of people infected with corona. The Asklepios City Clinic in Bad Tölz has treated 290 Covid patients as inpatients since the beginning of the pandemic, 50 of them in intensive care, as Dr. Martin Schlott, chief physician for anesthesia and intensive care medicine, explains. Ingo Kühn, Managing Director of the Wolfratshausen District Clinic, also states that his treatment team is “much more experienced and routine in dealing with Covid 19 patients than at the beginning of the Corona crisis. Nevertheless: the situation changes again and again, and new challenges arise.
"We are focused and prepared for a further increase in inpatient Covid 19 cases," explains Dr. Schlott on the current situation. According to him, ten Covid patients are currently being treated in the Asklepios City Clinic, four of them in the intensive care unit. A total of 90 percent of the intensive care beds at the Asklepios Clinic are occupied.
According to Kühn, there is currently only one Covid patient in the intensive care unit of the district clinic.
This will be ventilated.
However, Kühn reports at the same time of a "significant increase in seriously ill non-Covid patients who have to be treated in intensive care".
Due to these circumstances, the workload for the entire treatment team has "increased enormously", says Ingo Kühn and thanks all employees, "who take care of our patients every day, especially in the intensive care unit, and show their full commitment".
Such is the situation in the Oberland
Regarding the utilization of the intensive care units, not only the two relatively small clinics in Bad Tölz and Wolfratshausen should be considered regionally, but also the entire area of the Oberland rescue service, which also includes the districts of Weilheim-Schongau and Garmisch-Partenkirchen . Therefore, Dr. Schlott: It could happen occasionally that the intensive care beds in a single clinic are fully occupied. In the Oberland with its seven acute clinics and a total of around 110 intensive care beds, however, sufficient capacities would still be available.
The intensive capacities in the Oberland are "considerable, but not infinite", says Kühn meanwhile.
Even across the Oberland, intensive care beds are currently in short supply.
"We view this with great concern," said the district clinic boss.
“We don't want to experience conditions like in Italy last year.
We therefore have the great hope that the vaccination rate can be accelerated and that the course of the pandemic can be better managed. "
Schlott warns that “great caution is required”: It is “of central importance that the applicable contact restrictions and the distance and hygiene rules are observed”.
Situation different than in 2020
The two clinic representatives unanimously report that the current situation differs from that in spring 2020 or during the second wave from November. "We experience more seriously ill people in relation to all sick people," said Dr. Schlott. In the first wave, around 25 percent of the patients who came to the Tölzer hospital because of corona had to be treated in intensive care, now every second one. The Covid patients with severe courses are now on average in their mid-60s and younger. "In the first and second waves, the average age was about ten years higher," explains Schlott.
Your treatment time in the intensive care unit has increased from an average of three to five weeks.
The inpatients admitted to the hospital usually have an underlying disease such as high blood pressure, diabetes mellitus, chronic lung disease or obesity in addition to the corona infection.
"As a rule, admission to the intensive care unit leads to shortness of breath with increased breathing frequency," says the chief physician.
“The focus is on a lack of oxygen in the blood.
Often at this point in time, X-ray / CT already show sources of inflammation in the lung tissue. ”Kühn confirms the tendency that Covid patients are younger and longer dependent on intensive care therapy.
"In the past two patients were cared for in the same period of time, today it is one."
Read also: Waiting for the Vaccine Tsunami
Are the clinics already scaling back other treatments in order to keep capacity free for Covid patients? "No," replies Dr. Schlott from the Tölzer Clinic. “We continue to offer our full range of treatments.” In Wolfratshausen, on the other hand, according to Kühn, “only interventions that can be planned are carried out which, as a rule, do not involve a stay in an intensive care unit”. Further postponements of "elective interventions" are not necessary - also because general hospital occupancy has already decreased by around 20 percent since the beginning of the Covid crisis.
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