ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to measures of social isolation, labor restrictions, a strong information campaign and the suspension of scheduled medical activities. The aim of this study was to describe the impact of these measures on the number of hospitalizations in Cardiovascular Intensive Care Units, with the hypothesis that the social behavior generated by this emergency promotes a decreased demand for medical care, even when severe cardiovascular disease is involved. We compared the number of admissions in March-April 2010-2019 versus March-April 2020, based on a prospective study including six institutions (three public and three private) that use Epi-CardioR as a multicenter registry of cardiovascular care unit discharge. Altogether, we included 6839 patients discharged during the 11-year study period (2010-2020). The average number of patient admissions on March-April 2010-19 was 595 (CI 95%: 507-683) and decreased to 348 in 2020 fall of 46.8%, p.
ABSTRACT
This text proposes a scheme to analyze ethical dilemmas in the context of the Covid 19 pandemic, which present the sembling of a moral conflict faced by a person (by tensed normative criteria) or when several people or policy-bodies have different strategies in the face of a specific event and, in addition, each one assumes that their position is the most acceptable one. Ethics does not decide what the correct moral reference is, it analyses different normativity assumptions and helps to become aware of them. The text does not propose solutions, but presents an ethical analysis scheme that considers as a key input the identification of actors related to the context of the pandemic and how they are taken into account. The category of care is restored as a central recommendation to deal with the pandemic and as an assumption of all the ethical analysis. © 2020.