With intensive care units overwhelmed and hospitals rationing supplies, doctors in Spain face harrowing ethical choices while deciding which COVID-19 patients get the most advanced care.
On Wednesday, guidelines of Catalonia’s medical emergency response service distributed to hospitals and seen by the AP recommended that virus patients over 80 not be intubated. The document said staff should “offer resources to those patients who can most benefit from them as far as years of life to be saved avoid hospitalizations of people with scarce chances of survival.”
Guidelines previously developed by New York state’s health department exclude some seriously ill people from receiving limited ventilators in major emergencies but note that making old age an automatic disqualifier would be discriminatory. The plans add, however, that given the “strong societal preference for saving children,” age could be considered in a tie-breaker when a child’s life is at stake.
Spanish doctors and nurses say they do not dispute that they offer the best care possible to every patient, but they said lack of ventilators and ICU beds amid increased demand have forced them to raise the bar on who gets what treatment. She described the current situation as unique, “with extremely limited resources and a certain number of ventilators, and intensive care units that are overwhelmed. You have to prioritize and see which patients will most benefit from certain treatments.”
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