“Summer hasn’t started yet in the North, but in other regions it has and we are starting to see the first visits to the emergency room. Often they are elderly, very dehydrated. And the system responds because we will respond to the heat emergency, if there is one, as we always have done with respect to priorities, beyond the Heat Code that is so much touted in the media”. This was stated to Adnkronos Salute by Fabio De Iaco, president of the Italian Society of Emergency Medicine (Simeu), speaking on the implementation by the Regions, through the Local Health Authorities and hospital companies, of the Heat Codes – a preferential lane for the elderly and frail affected by the heat – in the emergency rooms. A request also arrived from the Minister of Health, Orazio Schillaci, and underlined on Saturday by an appeal to the Regions by the Director of Prevention of the Ministry of Health, Francesco Vaia.
“In the emergency rooms, we continue to work even in the summer with the established priority codes – De Iaco emphasizes – regardless of the heat, the cold or a pandemic. Emergency doctors work in the same way given the difficulties we are experiencing today in the emergency rooms, with staff reduced to the bone even for holidays. The emergency department machine is calibrated to respond to all needs. I believe that perhaps – observes the Simeu president – the Heat Code makes more sense in the territory and in proximity medicine, for the emergency room nothing changes. If a patient arrives with heat stroke and comorbidities, he will have priority over others waiting. We – he concludes – continue to stratify the responses and priorities on the basis of clinical parameters following a triage protocol codified by national guidelines”.
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