Emergency rooms taken by storm: not only elderly people but also children with respiratory viruses

Emergency first aid, with patients parked on stretchers even for days, crowded into structures awaiting admission to the ward. These days, with theincrease (more than expected) cases of influenza and other parainfluenza syndromes (see epidemiological bulletin of 29 December
RespiVirNetintegrated surveillance system for respiratory viruses managed by the Istituto Superiore di Sanit ed) I am admissions to the emergency room almost doubled and even children's access to emergency facilities tripled.
(HERE Advice to understand if you really need to go to the emergency room)

Pneumonia, hospitalizations on the rise

Reports Dr Marcello Covinohead of the emergency room operational unit and hospitalization destination Gemelli University Hospital of Rome: Normally in our hospital pneumonia represents 10% of hospitalizations
among patients arriving at the emergency room; at this moment we are recording an incidence of pneumonia in patients awaiting hospitalization which exceeds 45%. AND we cannot discharge patients with respiratory failurewhich are above all elderly or otherwise frail due to other pathologies. The number of people needing to be hospitalized higher than the seasonal average.

Even the youngest are affected

He adds Fabio De Iaco, president of
Italian Society of Emergency Medicine
(Simeu): It's not just the increase in elderly and “fragile” patients arriving in emergency rooms and who must be admitted to the ward, but also (obviously to a lesser extent) than younger people, with pneumonia not due to Covid or the flu. The day before yesterday in my hospital (Maria Vittoria of Turin, ed) we have intubated a 40-year-old woman, negative for Covid and flu, and we are still observing a 25-year-old girl. And again – continues De Iaco – at a national level, in some cases it happens also that the number of oxygen supply stations in the emergency room runs out. To deal with the emergency, many hospitals, from North to southare activating plans for the management of overcrowding in the emergency room, with the temporary conversion of beds (usually of the surgical area) in favor of the medical area.

Children's visits to the emergency room tripled

Children are also among those most affected by respiratory viruses

: these days, visits to the emergency room are increasing sharply, as he explains Fabio Midulla, president of the Italian Society of Childhood Respiratory Diseases
(Simri), head of the emergency pediatrics department of the Policlinico Umberto I in Rome: We are at the center of the peak of the epidemic of respiratory diseases. The accesses to the emergency room are tripled in the last month. AND 90% of the children hospitalized in our department are children with bronchiolitis
. We also record acute episodes of asthmatic bronchitis and pneumonia (we talked about it here).

Family doctors, increased visits and phone calls

Family doctors were also under attack

. Dr. Alessandro Rossi, president of the Italian Society of General Medicine and Primary Care (SIMG), reports: If on average, at a national level, the calls received by family doctors on ordinary days are around two million, in recent days they have doubled also arriving at four million phone calls a day. In practice, considering that there are around 40 thousand family doctors, a doctor receives up to a hundred phone calls a day. They call to ask for advice but also to make an appointment for a visit or request medical certificates. We also give instructions to our patients to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations – underlines Doctor Rossi -. Of course they are outpatient visits also increased.

Corriere della Sera also on Whatsapp. sufficient click here to subscribe to the channel and always be updated.