“New Start:” Medic Manipulates Surgical Backlog and Virus Fight

Lying on a stretcher ready to be taken to the operating room, the retired secretary Erganian tells the surgeon: “I’m doing this surgery to live a better life, so I’m enthusiastic and not a little scared.”

“A new start,” said surgeon Lara Ribeiro Parenti, excited to return to work with a scalpel. “This is what we know best and what we enjoy. It’s a renewal and a new start for us.”

That’s right for these women. However, thousands of people in France and other European countries most affected by the pandemic are still waiting for medical procedures that could change their lives and improve their health, but the virus leaves hospitals. It was considered unnecessary when attacked.

Their decks have been cleared to prevent the collapse of the public health system. People who have planned joint replacements to relieve pain, cataract removal to cloud vision, cancer screening, and countless other life-improving and even life-saving procedures avoid COVID I was told to stay home for 19-19 was prioritized.

At the 900-bed Bisha Hospital, the largest in the French capital, resources were devoted to the emergency room in the basement and the ward was silenced.

However, doctors can now treat viral patients better and prepare for the dual challenge of fighting COVID-19 while using other drugs. Now that France’s latest virus spike has stabilized, Bichat is taking advantage of its calm to tackle the untreated portion of surgery. The Associated Press team spent two days this month with staff to see how they are recovering from the virus surge that killed more than 55,600 people in France.

Bichat was the first non-Asia hospital to report the death of COVID-19 in February and turned upside down when the pandemic struck in March. Makeshift plastic screens were installed and supported by duct tape and pieces of wood to prevent the spread of contamination. The operating room and recovery room, about the size of a tennis court, were in a space that was quickly remodeled for a flood of sick people connected to a ventilator.

“It was a cataclysm,” recalls Simon Musika, who was responsible for gastrointestinal surgery in the empty unit. “The basement was full of people.”

When President Emmanuel Macron declared France at war with the virus and blocked the country in March, both Erganian and Andera quickly realized that their surgery was not done as planned.

“It was a hammer blow for the family because we were ready,” says Andera, a male caregiver with a disability.

According to the French Hospital Federation, apart from COVID-19 hospitalizations, hospitalizations across France have plummeted, with hospitalizations from March to July reduced by 2 million compared to the same period in 2019. .. Cataract surgery was almost completely stopped for eight weeks, and colonoscopy was used to detect cancer, plummeting 87%. According to the Commonwealth, the number of kidney transplants from March to September was halved. The statistician estimates that the number of patients waiting for the postponed procedure has increased by hundreds of thousands.

Neighboring Spain was fighting a long waiting list for non-urgent surgery, even before the virus killed more than 45,600 people there. In the first half of 2020, surgery plummeted by more than three years year-on-year, according to public health data. Average waiting time increased from 115 days to 170 days. At the end of June, 691,508 people were registered as waiting for non-urgent procedures. That’s over 20,000 a year ago.

By October, about 100,000 surgeries had been postponed in Portugal. Also, according to the Italian Association of Hospital Surgeons, more than 600,000 surgeries have been canceled, of which 50,000 are cancerous. By June, the association had already warned that it would take more than 13 months to clear the backlog.

Delays are more than just inconvenience for the patient. The Erganian weighed 140 kilograms (308 pounds) before surgery. The unlucked unluck weighed 133 kilograms (293 pounds). Both were afraid of being infected with the virus and were keenly aware that obesity increased their risk of dying from COVID-19. The unlucky says he rarely left home, except for work and groceries. Erganian says she lived in “horrible horror.”

Both earned more kilos in the blockade. The unlucked unluck cried when the nutritionist weighed her.

“I have three kids. I dream of doing a lot of things I can’t do now, such as roller blades, scouting, hoverboarding, and going to the pool without hiding,” she said. I said the afternoon before the surgery.

Erganian, 58, wants to lose more than a third of her weight as a result of cutting out most of her stomach to eliminate knee and back pain and sugar cane. For the last few weeks she prayed that her phone wouldn’t ring in another late news.

“In a developed European country like France, I think it’s unusual that the surgery that should have been done for COVID couldn’t be done,” she says. “We should not choose between one sick person and another.”

The pandemic was initially attacked with a force that hospitals in many countries barely dealt with, but it is changing. During France’s second blockade from October 30, Vicat surgeons performed far more surgery than at the time of the first closure. This month, all 22 operating rooms in the hospital were functioning again.

The operating room schedule managed by Aurelie Gouel, which was mostly filled with gap holes in March, is now a dense puzzle of colored blocks, each representing surgery. She likens as many operations as possible to the Tetris game of a computer game.

Guell calculates that the pandemic has so far been forced to postpone more than 600 surgeries in Bichat. Even if the operating room tilts completely again, she can’t see how the hospital catches up.

“There are always other patients to prioritize,” she says. “It will be complicated for a long time.”

Contributed by Associated Press writer Aritz Parra in Madrid, Barry Hatton in Lisbon, and Frances d’Emilio in Rome.

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