A Medical Worker Describes Terrifying Lung Failure from Covid-19

[voodooranger]

why not sedate a patient who’s suffering like this?

[adimitrov]

Most methods of sedation will bring on respiratory depression as a side effect. It's the reason you need to be on a ventilator when you're having anesthesia.

Needless to say, a patient who wants survive what the OP describes shouldn't risk additional respiratory depression.

Disclaimer: I'm no medical expert. I may be talking out of my ass.

[unsrsly]

Sedation should always be preferred to restraints, but for various reasons it is not possible to sedate someone 100% of the time in the ICU. The use of restraints described in the article is disturbing, but more context would be needed to understand whether they were appropriate or not.

[senectus1]

yeah I'm not gonna read that. As an asthmatic this scares the bejeepers out of me.

[Avalaxy]

As a non-asthmatic person, reading this caused me enough anxiety to clearly notice it became harder for me to breath.