Tag: covid ventilators

Guest Post by Pierre Kory

Of all the Covid “rabbit holes” I have gone down, each one then led to me entering an often public “science battle,” only some of which I have “won.” But I did win a few, none more successful than when I immediately shut down the shocking and rapidly spreading obsessive practice by ER and ICU doctors with putting Covid patients on ventilators “early.”

As the Chief of the Critical Care Service and Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center at the University of Wisconsin (we called the center “the TLC” for short but basically it was just the name for the main ICU at UW), I was one of the more experienced ICU clinicians. I was also known as a “vent geek.” In fact, one of the reasons why I became a pulmonary and critical care doc stemmed from an early fascination with operating mechanical ventilators. Subsequently, I have long taught taught the management of acute respiratory failure and mechanical ventilation to medical students, residents, and fellows. One of my core teaching points focused on identifying the optimal timing for the decision to transition a patient to a mechanical ventilator.

Guidance on how to make the decision is simple conceptually but stressfully complex in practice. Basically, the timing of transition to mechanical ventilation is that you always wants to shoot for “not doing it too early” while also “not delaying until too late.” See how simple that is? Continue reading “The Premature Use Of Mechanical Ventilation in the First Wave of the Covid Pandemic”