What US doctors wish they had known before the coronavirus outbreak
Doctors in the US
As the US sees a constant rise in the number of positive coronavirus cases,doctors believe had they known the severity of this virus, they would have equipped themselves in a better way.
With 47,973 deaths out of 8,55,255, USA has the highest number of cases in the world.However, there are several reports indicating that the curve might start to flatten.
As the doctors spend hours in trying to convert the positive cases to negative, theywish they had known about few things before things got worse. Dr. Jolion McGreevy, Director, Mount Sinai Hospital Emergency Department, New York said doctors had learned that some patients benefitted from not being immediately intubated, even if their oxygen levels were low. However, some respondedwell to changing their position every half an hour.
"What I did not recognise was the severity of illness that would be seen in patients who are older and the rapidity with which this illness would spread through elderly populations," said Dr. Anju Goel,an internal medicine specialist in California. She also believes that more could have been done to protect the elderly, especially, from exposure to the virusif the practitioners had understood how severely the respiratory disease would affect the elderly.
DrJennifer Haythe, an internist and critical care cardiologist at Columbia University Medical Center, who believes that hat ventilators were essential, agreed that for some patientsflipping patients onto their front allowed the lungs to open and expand and give better oxygenation.
"If you want to give them a shot at survival, you put a breathing tube in."
Health expertsbelieve that the country could have been better prepared and could have avoided the mass number of cases if they would have realized what was coming earlier.