Intensive care in many parts of the country sees a sharp increase in the number of covid patients and expects a rapid development.
In Skåne, the number of intensive care patients has tripled over a ten-day period.
– We expect it to be an explosive process. Once the patients start coming, quite a few will come in a short time, and we do not know where it will end, says Björn Orrhede, intensive care physician and section manager at iva in Malmö.
The curves of the number infected per day in Sweden continues to rise, and the number of covid patients in intensive care is also increasing. This spring, many regions chose to cancel planned operations to cope with the increased pressure. According to Sweden’s municipalities and regions, this is a reduction of 20 percent.
But even if you could increase the rate of surgery, it would take more than two years to catch up, calculations made by the Swedish perioperative register, SPOR, show.
In order not to make the care queues even longer, several regions that Ekot has been in contact with want to continue to carry out planned operations for as long as possible. However, due to the increased spread of infection in society and a greater burden on healthcare, several hospitals have now begun to cancel operations that are not urgent, for example Södersjukhuset in Stockholm.
– It’s stressful. The number of people who apply to us and who need to be admitted, both in inpatient care and in intensive care, is increasing every day. Just like last spring, we had to prioritize the types of operations that can be postponed, says Anne Kierkegaard, chief physician at Södersjukhuset.
At the intensive care unit in Malmö, intensive care physician Björn Orrhede is concerned about the increasing number of covid patients who are now hospitalized. There, the healthcare management wants to continue with planned operations as long as possible, but Björn Orrhede thinks it is time to pull the brakes and cancel operations that are not urgent.
– Rather change a little too much, because we do not know where it will end. I understand that it will affect other patient groups and I understand that it is a goal conflict. This is worrying, because we know that there is a time delay of a few weeks from the time the patients fall ill until they become really ill, says Björn Orrhede.