[Prioritization of health resources in contexts of scarcity. SESPAS Report 2022]. / Priorización de recursos sanitarios en contextos de escasez. Informe SESPAS 2022.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a clinical challenge, but also a legal and bioethical one. These three fundamental pillars are developed in the approach to prioritizing health resources in pandemic, clinical criteria, corresponding legal framework and applicable ethical principles. Initially, clinical criteria were applied to identify patients with the best survival prognosis, combining a clinical evaluation and the use of short-term and long-term prognostic variables. But the decision to prioritize the care of one patient over another has a legal-political burden, which poses a risk of falling into discrimination since fundamental rights are at stake. The prioritization criteria must be based on principles that reflect as a vehicle philosophy that which we have constitutionally assumed as a social and democratic State of Law, which did not respond to utilitarianism but to personalism. Any philosophy of resource distribution must bear in mind the scientific and constitutional perspective and, with them, those of fundamental rights and bioethical principles. In the prioritization of resources, ethical principles must be consolidated such as respect for the human dignity, the principle of necessity (equal need, equal access to the resource), the principle of equity (which advises prioritizing the most vulnerable population groups), transparency (fundamental in society's trust) and the principle of reciprocity (which requires protecting the sectors of the population that take more risks), among others.

Prioritization, patient selection, and multimodal perioperative management of colorectal cancer facing health-care system saturation.

OBJECTIVE: The aim is to analyze the usefulness of pre-operative COVID-19 screening to detect asymptomatic patients, the capability of our patient selection algorithm to detect patients with more advanced tumors and the results of colorectal cancer surgery managed with a multimodal approach. We propose the use of a preoperative patient selection algorithm to prioritize the surgical treatment of patients with worse oncological prognosis and lower perioperative risk in situations of health system saturation. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Prospective descriptive study including 71 patients operated on for colorectal cancer during COVID-19's high incidence period. A division was made into two periods of time that were later compared with the aim of assessing whether the scale used identified those patients with lower surgical risk and higher oncological priority for their priority scheduling. RESULTS: Post-operative severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection occurred in one patient (1.4%). Pre-operative polymerase chain reaction detected one asymptomatic patient (3%). Tumor stage was ≥ IIIA in 39% and node positive in 39% of patients in the first period, while 26% and 21% in the second period, respectively (p = 0.320; p = 0.179), without increasing the surgical stay or complications. Median hospital stay was 5 days. Grades III and IV morbidity were 4.4% and 1.4%. CONCLUSION: The use of an algorithm and Patient Selection Scale can detect patients with more advanced tumors to be operated before. Multimodal management/ERAS have a role in achieving short stay and low morbidity.

OBJETIVO: El retraso terapéutico derivado de la saturación del Sistema sanitario conlleva un peor pronóstico oncológico y un aumento de complicaciones en el cáncer colorrectal. Proponemos el usode un algoritmo de selección de pacientes de forma preoperatoria para priorizar el tratamiento quirúrgico de los pacientes con peor pronóstico oncológico y menor riesgo perioperatorio. MATERIAL Y MÉTODOS: Realizamos un estudio descriptivo prospectivo de 71 pacientes intervenidos por cáncer colorrectal durante el periodo de máxima incidencia por COVID. Se realizó una división en dos periodos de tiempo que fueron comparados posteriormente con el objetivo de valorar si la escala utilizada conseguía identificar aquellos pacientes con menor riesgo quirúrgico y mayor prioridad oncológica para su programación prioritaria. RESULTADOS: Utilizando la escala de priorización de pacientes (PSS) observamos que el estadio tumoral fue mayor de IIIA en un 39% de los pacientes con un 39% de ganglios positivos en un primer periodo, frente a un 26% y 21% en un segundo periodo (p = 0.320; p = 0.179) de tiempo, sin aumentar la estancia operatoria ni las complicaciones. Se realizaron dos métodos de cribado de COVID-19 en dos periodos de tiempo, detectando un 3% de pacientes asintomáticos de forma preoperatoria con PCR, y documentando un 1.4% de infección por COVID postoperatoria. CONCLUSIONES: Ante la saturación del sistema sanitario, la utilización de protocolos y algoritmos para selección de pacientes con cáncer colorrectal puede ayudar a dar preferencia quirúrgica a aquellos casos que no deben ser demorados.

Pandemic triage: ethical foundations for the allocation of advanced life support resources in scarcity scenario / El triaje en pandemia: fundamentos éticos para la asignación de recursos de soporte vital avanzado en escenarios de escasez

Las pandemias y otras catástrofes de alto impacto sanitario azotan periódicamente a la humanidad, aumentando desproporcionadamente la demanda por atención en servicios de urgencia, unidades de cuidados intensivos y medios de soporte vital avanzado. Este desequilibrio obliga a una compleja toma de decisiones en que se deben asignar recursos proporcionalmente escasos en relación a una gran demanda. Así, los equipos clínicos asistenciales necesitan actuar bajo criterios consensuados, que orienten sus decisiones y alivien la pesada carga moral de seleccionar pacientes para terapias, en detrimento de otros. El triaje es una estrategia que permite establecer, bajo racionalidades propias a cada escenario, objetivos y criterios que faciliten la toma de decisiones complejas para el logro del mejor resultado. Estas estrategias deben considerar el marco de valores intangibles que apreciamos y que nos identifican cultural y socialmente, como son el respeto a la vida, la igualdad, la justicia y la libertad. Sin embargo, en escenarios excepcionales como el de la actual pandemia COVID-19, en que el sistema sanitario puede no dar abasto, deberán establecerse objetivos prioritarios, como salvar la mayor cantidad de vidas, del modo más humano, justo y eficiente posible. A la vez, deberán redefinirse jerarquías en los valores y principios clásicos de la práctica clínica cotidiana, adecuadas a la catástrofe sanitaria, bajo una ética propia de la salud pública, el mayor bien para la mayoría y el mejor cuidado de los que no pueden ser curados.

Pandemics and other global disasters regularly overwhelm humankind. These catastrophic events suddenly increase demand for health-care in emergency services, intensive care units, and for advanced life support devices. This imbalance requires complex decision-making in which scarce resources must be allocated in relation to high demand. Thus, health-care teams need to act under consensus criteria that guide their decisions and alleviate the heavy moral burden of selecting patients for therapies, excluding others. Triage is a strategy that allows to establish, under appropriate rationalities, objectives and criteria that facilitate complex decisions to achieve the best results. These strategies should consider the framework of intangible values that we appreciate and identify us culturally and socially, such as respect for life, equity, justice and freedom. However, in exceptional scenarios such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, where the health system may be overcome, priority goals should focus in order to save as many lives as possible and by mean the most humane, fair and efficient way possible. At the same time, hierarchies of classical values and principles of daily clinical practice should be redefined in an appropriate way to face this catastrophic scenario, under an ethics for public health, the greatest good for the most and the best care of those who cannot be cured.

The EPAGE guidelines are not an effective strategy for managing colonoscopies during the COVID-19 pandemic. / EPAGE no es una estrategia eficaz para la gestión de colonoscopias durante la pandemia por COVID-19.

INTRODUCTION: The pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has had a serious impact on the functioning of gastrointestinal endoscopy Units. The Asociación Española de Gastroenterología (AEG) and the Sociedad Española de Endoscopia Digestiva (SEED) have proposed the EPAGE guidelines for managing postponed colonoscopies. OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the EPAGE guidelines as a management tool compared to the immunologic faecal occult blood test (iFOBT) and compared to risk score (RS) that combines age, sex and the iFOBT for the detection of colorectal cancer (CRC) and significant bowel disease (SBD). METHODS: A prospective, single-centre study enrolling 743 symptomatic patients referred for a diagnostic colonoscopy. Each order was classified according to the EPAGE guidelines as appropriate, indeterminate or inappropriate. Patients underwent an iFOBT and had their RS calculated. RESULTS: The iFOBT (p<0.001), but not the EPAGE guidelines (p = 0.742), was an independent predictive factor of risk of CRC. The ROC AUCs for the EPAGE guidelines, the iFOBT and the RS were 0.61 (95% CI 0.49-0.75), 0.95 (0.93-0.97) and 0.90 (0.87-0.93) for CRC, and 0.55 (0.49-0.61), 0.75 (0.69-0.813) and 0.78 (0.73-0.83) for SBD, respectively. The numbers of colonoscopies needed to detect a case of CRC and a case of SBD were 38 and seven for the EPAGE guidelines, seven and two for the iFOBT, and 19 and four for a RS ≥5 points, respectively. CONCLUSION: The EPAGE guidelines, unlike the iFOBT, is not suitable for screening candidate patients for a diagnostic colonoscopy to detect CRC. The iFOBT, in combination with age and sex, is the most suitable strategy for managing demand for endoscopy in a restricted-access situation.