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Christophe Prudhomme (emergency physician)
This is a study that was presented Thursday, June 8 at the Congress of emergency physicians. It shows that for patients aged 75 and over, the risk of dying increases by 50% after a night spent on a stretcher, waiting in the emergency room.
What is the risk of excess mortality for patients waiting in the emergency room? This is the question that this study, conducted by Yonahan Freund, an emergency physician at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, sought to answer.
A study carried out during the triple epidemic of influenza, Covid-19 and bronchiolitis
Carried out on a cohort of 1,598 patients aged over 75 spread over 97 emergency departments throughout France, this work highlights the excess mortality suffered by some patients, who wait long hours before being taken care of. .
These people were followed between December 12 and 14, a period when the flu, Covid-19 and bronchiolitis were raging in hospitals.
Excess mortality increased by 50% for these patients
In this cohort, the patients were separated into two groups, depending on whether they could have been hospitalized in a service or not. On the one hand, 707 patients spent at least one night on a stretcher. On the other, 891 others who were able to have a bed in a conventional service, before midnight the day of their arrival at the hospital. Results: the risk of dying would be 50% higher if waiting after a night on a stretcher.
“Worse, if we look more specifically at elderly patients who have limited autonomy, and therefore even more fragile, these patients die almost twice as much if they spend a night on a stretcher rather than in a hospital bed. classic” confides Yonahan Freund to our colleagues from France Inter.
The point of view of Dr Christophe Prudhomme, emergency doctor and AMUF spokesperson
“We have known for several years that patients who are not hospitalized in adequate departments or in intensive care when necessary experienced excess mortality. The figures mentioned for December and January last by the Samu Urgences de France union report 150 deaths. preventable by lack of care. This is surely a low range. In the United Kingdom, which is experiencing a situation similar to ours, the figures are 500 deaths per week. All these deaths are the result of liberal policies which leads public services to their destruction. This outrageous denial allows us to accuse Mr. Braun and Mr. Macron of being murderers by proxy, they are undoubtedly responsible for these deaths“.