A team from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto and CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research will listen to the opinion of different actors in the health sector, namely doctors, university professors of medicine and researchers, on the establishment of criteria guidelines for the admission of patients to intensive care due to COVID-19.
The question has already been raised in many countries affected by the new coronavirus pandemic and it is assumed that it will also arise in our country.
“At the moment, there is no known restriction on access to intensive care in Portugal. Still, preventively, it is important that we have a well-defined framework for ethical prioritization, in case of a shortage of resources in this area,” argue Altamiro da Costa Pereira (director of FMUP and coordinator of CINTESIS) and Rui Nunes (professor at FMUP and researcher at CINTESIS).
For the coordinators of the study, we must anticipate the possibility of “a disproportionate demand for access to intensive care in view of the existing offer during a specific period.”
A “strictly anonymous” questionnaire will be carried out during the study and in “accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation, the data collected will be “immediately anonymized after computer processing is completed.”
At issue is the very existence of universal, explicit, transparent and consensual criteria, along with clinical criteria, on admission to intensive care.
In the case of the impossibility of simultaneous admission of patients to these services, it is asked what should or should not be valued in prioritizing patients.
The researchers of the study want answers to questions such as “Can age alone be the only element of decision?” or “Should the opportunity cost principle be taken into account?”
Those interested in participating in this study are asked to pay attention to their email inbox.