Intensive care medicine
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Intensive care medicine · Mar 2023
Observational StudyExcess mortality among non-COVID-19 surgical patients attributable to the exposure of French intensive and intermediate care units to the pandemic.
The mobilization of most available hospital resources to manage coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may have affected the safety of care for non-COVID-19 surgical patients due to restricted access to intensive or intermediate care units (ICU/IMCUs). We estimated excess surgical mortality potentially attributable to ICU/IMCUs overwhelmed by COVID-19, and any hospital learning effects between two successive pandemic waves. ⋯ Significant excess mortality essentially occurred outside of the ICU/IMCU, suggesting that access of surgical patients to critical care was limited.