الاثنين، 11 مايو 2020

ICU Doctor: What I Wish People Knew About Coronavirus

My father-in-law recently asked me if it is hard to see hospitals and death in film because their depictions are so inaccurate. Yes, it can ruin the realism for me and make me cringe. Then I realized that just watching the news or press conferences these days are giving me the same feeling.

Everyone seems to be talking about intensive care units (ICUs) and COVID-19 patients. As someone who has been dealing with these things every day, I am qualified to share some rarely discussed aspects.

Firstly, ICU doctors look for patterns. We like putting patients into logical categories to help organize our assessments and plans. “This patient is a recurrent urinary tract infection patient, indwelling foley, so likely has a severely high level of antibiotic resistance.” “This is one of those pear-shaped chain smokers with unstable angina who likely has a 99% LAD lesion and hypertriglyceridemia.”

The numbers we see on the screen of a patient’s chart give us tremendous insight into what the expected pattern of behavior a disease process will take in the ICU. With COVID-19, it is like that clichéd scene in the movies where the scientist looks up from the microscope and says, “This doesn’t seem to behave like anything I’ve ever seen before.”

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