GiViTi COVID-19 Meeting 10 March 2020 – ICU Patients

GiViTi is a group of Italian professionals operating in the intensive care departments of hospitals in Italy.

On March 10, GiViTi doctors met in a videoconference during which they shared their experiences and practical advice for best handling CoVid-19 patients who are in critical condition.

The main points were noted by Dr. Dario Pietrantozzi, an anesthesiologist at the University of Pisa, in an effort to offer practical advice to anesthesiologists and intensive care workers in Italian hospitals.

La Voce di New York asked Italian-speaking U.S.-based doctors to translate those guidelines into English. The translation is the work of Dr. Emiliano Mugnaini, MD/PhD, hematologist, and Dr. Italo Ibi, MD/PhD, anesthesiologist, both from the George Washington University in Washington DC.

The part of the data that can be easily digested by laypeople are the typical characteristics of patients in Italy who are diagnosed with COVID-19 and then end up in critical care.

  • The average age of patients is about 70 years old.
  • The most frequent co-morbidity is obesity.
  • A clear majority of patients are males.

For more technical items, including hematochemistry, drug therapies, monitoring and weaning practices, read Luca Passani‘s full report on VNY.

A recording of the teleconference (conducted in Italian) can be watched on GiViTi’s website.

The Italian-language notes from that recording can be found here.

There is no mention of cardiogenic shock, likely those who suffer such shock end up immediately dying, whilst the thrust of the conference was to discuss care of novel-coronavirus patients in the ICU.