You can't use ventilators without sedatives. Now the US is running out of those, too. [View all]
“It’s like having a car without gas.”
......To save a Covid-19 patient’s life with a ventilator, you also need an ample supply of medications, both to be able to use the machine and to prevent agonizing pain. Experts say there’s a worrisome shortage of those, too — one that’s only expected to grow worse.
“The minute you talk about ventilators you need to talk about medications,” says Esther Choo, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. Choo says hospitals are already running out of medications like fentanyl, versed, propofol, and even neuromuscular blockades, what she calls “everyday bread and butter medications,” the drugs needed to induce and maintain sedation while on a ventilator. “Ventilators can’t really be used without these medications.”
In severe cases of Covid-19, the patient's’ own immune system can cause their lungs to fill with fluid. At this point, ventilators are a critical tool for keeping people alive. Medical staff insert a tube deep into the lungs in a process called intubation, in order to deliver more oxygen from a ventilator than the patient can inhale on their own.
“You can imagine if I tried to shove a plastic tube down your throat, it’s a very human reflex not to let someone do that,” Choo says. “So we place people in deep sedation.” After the tube is placed in the trachea, patients have to stay sedated — in the case of some Covid-19 patients, that can last for several weeks. Without the right medications, “that experience can be agonizing,” Choo says.
https://www-vox-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/4/6/21209589/coronavirus-medicine-ventilators-drug-shortage-sedatives-covid-19
As if we didn't have enough to worry about already. Is tRump preparing for this in any way?
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