One and a half weeks ago, there were 77 coronary patients in intensive care units, but now there are only 48.
Intensive care there has been a significant shift in need in just over a week.
On Wednesday morning, only 48 patients with coronary heart disease were being treated in the Finnish intensive care units. In addition, only 40 of them were being treated for coronavirus. Eight of the infections had a side effect.
The worst patients were 77 a week and a half ago, the highest number since April 2020, when the highest number recorded was 83 in intensive care patients.
“At that point, it looked worrying, but there was a very strong downward trend over the past week,” describes the intensive care professor. Matti Reinikainen From the University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio University Hospital. He heads the intensive care care coordination office, which compiles the situation picture of intensive care in Finland.
Last During the week, more than 40 intensive care periods for corona-positive patients began in the Finnish intensive care units, while more than 60 new intensive care periods began in each of the previous two calendar weeks. According to Reinikainen, the turn for the better is clear.
The load-bearing capacity of this number of coronary patients is already well tolerated. According to Reinikainen, not all surgeries can be performed normally at the moment, because more staff are absent than usual due to corona infections, among other things.
“It looks pretty relieving. There are still hospitals with moderate pressure, but the direction is good, ”says Reinikainen.
He says it is difficult to predict future developments. In Sweden, the need for coronary intensive care increased sharply in December and began to decline in early January, but has remained fairly stable for the past three weeks, at just over a hundred patients.
Coordinating the office compiles the records of all power departments on a daily basis. The Department of Health and Welfare updates its own statistics three times a week.
The proportion of coronary infections diagnosed as side effects in recent weeks has been between 10% and 20% of intensive care patients. On Wednesday, 17 percent of them, or one in six.
This daily breakdown did not begin in patient statistics until January. According to Reinikainen, there has been no need for it before. By the end of last year, 95 percent of coronary-positive patients were in intensive care specifically for coronavirus-related reasons. The main diagnosis has been viral pneumonia caused by the disease.
“The prevalence of the virus in society is now so high that carriers of the virus are also involved in accidents and surgical problems,” Reinikainen explains.
Open it is not how much of the intensive care patients still have a delta variant of the virus. At least in the hospitals of the Helsinki and Uusimaa hospital districts, the delta has already reportedly given way to omicron.
Renikainen estimates that the decrease in the need for intensive care may be explained by the lower pathogenicity of omicron and the increase in vaccination coverage.
“But there are still severe symptoms. It is premature to say whether the profile of intensive care patients is changing. ”
The need for other hospital care has remained stable for a couple of weeks. Most specialty areas have slightly fewer patients in specialty care than at their worst in the middle of the month.
On the other hand, the number of infections cannot be reliably monitored because a large proportion of those infected are not tested.
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