President Peruvian Society of Intensive Care Medicine, Jesús Valverde, warned this month that the beds in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in the country are already collapsed after the increase in patients with COVID-19.
In an interview with the program Rotary Air of RPP, the doctor explained that the ICU is very dynamic and specified that until yesterday, Sunday, there were no beds in this unit in hospitals and private clinics in the capital.
“Nowadays the hospital beds, which were the reserve of the hospitals, are already filled. This means that patients migrate directly from their homes to tertiary hospitals frankly and vertically. At this point we can say that National ICUs are already collapsed“Our growth is taking place in large areas outside the Intensive Care Unit,” he warned.
Jesus Valverde clarified that ICU beds will not solve the problem of patients with COVID-19, for which he proposed a second level isolation strategy based on high flow systems installed in general hospital areas. “We currently have about 350 to 400 high-flow devices nationwide,” he added.
“We propose to the Ministry of Health and, three or four months ago, these high-flow systems are bought. High-flow systems are high-speed oxygen inlet systems that in a relative and absolute way in many cases solve the respiratory problem in patients who will progress severely, “he said.
Also, Jesus Valverde highlighted tcontinuous work of intensive care physicians throughout the 10-month pandemicdespite staff exhaustion. In addition, he insisted that the growth of the ICU had peaked because there were no more health professionals.
“The pandemic revealed that the deficit of intensivists It is big nationally, we are facing a global crisis of intensive care physicians, it is happening all over the world, it is happening in Europe in North America and Peru was no stranger to it. Latin America does not have a number of intensivists similar to the countries of the first world “, he cried.
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