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Wednesday 18 November 2020
Request for advance directives
All Swiss ICU beds occupied
The situation has arisen in recent days and the last intensive care bed in Switzerland is now occupied. The Swiss Society of Intensive Medicine communicates this and at the same time asks people to update their living will.
In Switzerland, the second wave reached a new high. All ICU beds “are currently practically fully occupied,” announced the Swiss ICU. This is a total of 876 intensive care beds certified by the Swiss Society of Intensive Medicine (SGI) for adults. According to the Federal Council, 240 additional intensive care beds have been created so far. But they are not yet certified. Meanwhile, 60 percent of all ICU beds are occupied by Covid 19 patients, up from 46 percent as of early November.
So far, it has only been possible to prevent overloading because non-urgent interventions and care have been postponed in many places. In addition, several critically ill patients had been transferred to other cantons due to a lack of intensive care resources. “These transfers from the region of origin are a great burden for affected patients and their relatives,” he says.
At the same time, society appealed to the people’s sense of responsibility. “ICU specialists are doing their best to cope with this increased influx of critically ill patients compared to the first wave of Covid 19 and to be able to care for all critically ill patients in the future as well.” It is now important to reduce the number of infections.
Simplify your decisions
How critical the situation is can be seen from a request made by intensive care doctors. Everyone, but particularly coronary risk patients, are “urged to give an advance directive as to whether or not to receive life-prolonging measures in the event of severe disease.” It should be noted that this supports your relatives and intensive care unit teams in their treatment decisions.
In Switzerland, heated debates have taken place over the past week on so-called triage. Doctors decide on the basis of various criteria which sick people receive intensive care and who does not. The guidelines of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and the Society of Intensive Care Medicine, updated in early November, state that short-term prognosis is decisive for triage. Consequently, the highest priority is given to those patients whose prognosis for hospital discharge is “good with ICU, but poor without it”. Patients who cannot receive intensive medical care should therefore receive palliative care.
The number of new infections in Switzerland increased significantly in October. Meanwhile, more than 10,000 infections have occurred within 24 hours, according to the Federal Office of Public Health. The number is now just over 6,000, but the number of ICU patients and deaths is on the rise. 85 patients with Covid-19 died on Tuesday.
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