A prominent New York City doctor testified that too many COVID-19 patients in the city’s hospitals were put on ventilators during the pandemic peak, reports the New York Post.
Ventilators were used too much during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York and turned out to be less effective than other treatments, the city’s top public hospital doctor said.
“One fortunate thing we learned is that patients are better off [without ventilators],” Health and Hospitals CEO Mitchell Katz said in Thursday testimony before the City Council. Studies have found that two-thirds to 90 percent of the seriously ill patients placed on ventilators died.
Katz said there were alternative or “non-invasive” ways to help patients breathe without putting a tube down their throat—particularly referring to BiPAP and CPAP machines that deliver pressurized air through a mask to a patient’s airways.
Read more at the New York Post.
