Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Time of the Coronavirus Disease –2019 Pandemic: Lessons From the East (and From a Previous Epidemic) for Western Battlefields

THE CORONAVIRUS DISEASE 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak that spread from Wuhan, China, in December 2019 became a global pandemic within about 2 months, causing more than 330,000 deaths worldwide so far (at the time of writing).1 This has forced hospitals in the most affected countries and regions around the world to rearrange their activity, creating new spaces and pathways while reducing nonurgent admissions and health services.2 Although only a minority of patients infected with the new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) develop symptoms severe enough to require intensive care unit (ICU) admission,3 the wide diffusion of contagion led to a very high absolute number of patients admitted to the ICU (about 90% of whom required tracheal intubation and invasive mechanical ventilation),4 thus overwhelming the usual numbers of ICU beds and mechanical ventilators of national/regional health systems and forcing hospitals to draw resources from other clinical settings such as elective surgery.
Source: Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Editorial Source Type: research