Fifth Wave of Covid-19: long wait for patients “deprogrammed”

To support patients affected by the virus, hospitals report non-urgent operations. An extension of the deadlines that causes real losses of luck for the patients concerned.

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Manuela Wolgramm finally finds hope. In early January, his nephrologist told him that the transplant activity gradually resumed at the Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital, in the suburbs of Paris. The 48-year-old Francilian is waiting for a kidney transplant. At the first wave of COVID-19 in 2020, she had received a letter from the hospital: because of the epidemic, graft levies had been stopped.

Since, the waves are linked, and the wait has prolonged as much. “Psychologically, it’s hard to live under dialysis. We can not work, we can not travel,” she describes, to catch his breath several times to finish his sentences.

Difficult, too, not to see the consequences of the months passing on his body: “I’m dribble more easily, I am more tired.” Finally add anxiety, while the coronavirus circulates like never ever Under the thrust of the Omicron Variant, to be contaminated with weakened immune defenses.

“I live alone at home, in a permanent confinement for two years,” she says. The risk of death for patients waiting for transplant is 20% in case of CVIV-19 infection, according to Renaloo, the association of renal insufficient patients who accompanies it.

more complicated surgery

After two years of health crisis, the price to be paid always looks higher for patients who have seen their operation canceled or their support for new pause with the fifth epidemic wave.

 An operating room, in the surgery and surgical resuscitation service of the Bichat hospital, in Paris, in November 2020.
 The alarm clock room has been reconverted in space of Resuscitation for Patients with COVID-19, at Bichat Hospital, Paris, November 2020.

To fit the influx of patients with COVID-19, many hospitals had to put a blow to Stop a part of their usual activity this winter. Especially in some regions: in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur or in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, it is a maximum deprogramming of the surgical activity that was engaged in December 2021.

The vise is just starting to loosen. In the Lyon region, the operative blocks, which found themselves to turn at alarming levels of 30% of their usual capabilities during the holidays, are reassembled at 50% of activity at the beginning of the year.

“It has been two years since the activity has never been able to regain normally,” said Dr. Vincent Piriou, who leads the Medical Commission for the Establishment of Civil Hospices of Lyon. Vital emergencies and carcinological activity are well Preserved during this wave, but we arrived at a point where “losses of luck” even affect patients requiring functional surgery. “

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/Media reports.