Ethical conflicts associated with COVID-19 pandemic, triage and frailty-unexpected positive disease progression in a 90-year-old patient: A case report

Andreas Wehrfritz; Joachim Schmidt; Frank Bremer; Anne-Katharina Lang; Jacob Welzer; Ixchel Castellanos

doi:10.1002/ccr3.7710

Ethical conflicts associated with COVID-19 pandemic, triage and frailty-unexpected positive disease progression in a 90-year-old patient: A case report

Clin Case Rep. 2023 Jul 18;11(7):e7710. doi: 10.1002/ccr3.7710. eCollection 2023 Jul.

Authors

Andreas Wehrfritz¹, Joachim Schmidt¹, Frank Bremer¹, Anne-Katharina Lang¹, Jacob Welzer², Ixchel Castellanos¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anaesthesiology University hospital of Erlangen, Faculty of Medicine, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen Erlangen Germany.
² Department of Anaesthesiology Klinikum Fuerth Fuerth Germany.

Abstract

During the COVID 19 pandemic, advanced age, scoring systems, and a shortage of ICU beds were used as cut-offs for ICU admission. This case report describes the epicrisis of an elderly patient who was almost mistakenly not treated in an ICU.

Keywords: COVID‐19; aged patient; ethical dilemma; triage and frailty; unexpectedly positive trend.

Publication types

Case Reports