#COVID-19 : 28 millions de chirurgies annulées | santé log
▻https://www.santelog.com/actualites/covid-19-28-millions-de-chirurgies-annulees
En 12 semaines, COVID-19 aura entraîné l’annulation de 28 millions de chirurgies dans le monde, révèle cette étude d’épidémiologistes de l’Université de Birmingham, qui sensibilisent à l’arrêt global des procédures, mais aussi des parcours de soins de millions de patients, atteints de maladies chroniques. Autant de patients confrontés à une longue attente pour la résolution de leurs problèmes de santé, révèle cette étude, présentée dans le British Journal of Surgery.
Ce qui a conduit certains à affirmer qu’une partie de la #surmortalité actuelle était due à cet « arrêt des procédures et parcours de soins » et, partant, que le taux de décès par #COVID-19 était surestimé,
L’article ci-dessous est au contraire en faveur d’une sous-estimation des #décès par COVID_19 (ici aux #etats-unis).
How COVID-19 Deaths Are Counted - Scientific American
▻https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-covid-19-deaths-are-counted1
Both undercounts and overcounts of COVID-19 deaths are possible, Wolfson said, but it’s not yet clear which is more likely, or whether they might simply balance each other out. Fowkes said that based on her experience, it’s more likely that COVID-19 deaths are being missed than overcounted. That’s because New York is among several cities that show spikes in deaths at home, and these anomalous spikes could be due to untested, untreated COVID-19.
Perhaps, the best clue as to whether COVID-19 deaths have been undercounted or overcounted is excess mortality data. Excess mortality is deaths above and beyond what would normally be expected in a given population in a given year. CDC data shows a spike of excess mortality in early 2020, adding up to tens of thousands of deaths.
Some argue that many of these excess deaths are related to COVID-19 lockdowns, not COVID-19 themselves, Faust said, because people fear catching the disease if they go to the hospital for other reasons. A study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology did find that nine major hospitals saw a 38% drop in emergency visits for a particular kind of heart attack in March. That suggests that people really are delaying or avoiding medical care, which could mean that some of them die of preventable causes.
But non-COVID conditions probably don’t explain most excess deaths, Faust said. Only a portion of heart attack visits would have represented lives saved, he said, because doctors must treat perhaps 10 patients to save one life. And other causes of death—such as motor vehicle accidents—are down.
This could change with time, Faust cautioned. For example, if cancer patients forego their treatments for a year, rather than a few months, the impact on their death rates is much more likely to be noticeable in the population-wide data. But for now, he said, “it’s unlikely that the coronavirus deaths are being overcounted by a magnitude that explains our observation that something very unusual is going on.”