Special Report: As virus advances, doctors rethink rush to ventilate
Instead of putting Bergmann on a mechanical ventilator, the clinic gave him morphine and kept him on the oxygen mask. He's since tested free of the infection, but not fully recovered. The head of the clinic, Thomas Voshaar, a German pulmonologist, has argued strongly against early intubation of COVID-19 patients. Doctors including Voshaar worry about the risk that ventilators will damage patients' lungs.
"Initially we were intubating fairly quickly on these patients as they began to have more respiratory distress," said Robert Hart, the hospital system's chief medical officer. "Over time what we learned is trying not to do that."
Instead, Hart's hospital tried other forms of ventilation using masks or thin nasal tubes, as Voshaar did with his German patient. "We seem to be seeing better results," Hart said.
The Italians were swiftly followed by Cameron Kyle-Sidell, a New York physician who put out a talk on YouTube saying that by preparing to put patients on ventilators, hospitals in America were treating "the wrong disease." Ventilation, he feared, would lead to "a tremendous amount of harm to a great number of people in a very short time." This remains his view, he told Reuters this week.
Reading this I wonder how many people died from using the ventilator too early or using it in general.