this is scary stuff.

[gategrrl]

Fascinating article about how the ICU treatments may actually be harming the patients they're supposed to helping by over medicating narcotics and sedatives and not allowing the patients contact with reality, for weeks at a time. Even a short stay of a few days can devastate a person years later.

Comments

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is kind of scary. I think there's a lot that is pretty common in medicine in which the treatment is much worse than the actual problem it's supposedly curing.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

You would have thought that the treatments that happen in hospitals would have some FOLLOW-UP, you know? So that hospitals could understand how sometimes the treatment for one person/condition is NOT best for another person/condition.

The waters are muddied because, hey, these are very ill people...but common sense would tell you that keeping anyone drugged on powerful, disturbing narcotics is not a good thing. The human mind needs reality to keep it on an even keel.

[jomadge.livejournal.com]

The only thing that bugs me about that article is that it suggests over and over that the ICU stays were unquestioningly the cause of all these patient's post-ICU problems. What about the grave conditions that put them in the ICU in the first place?

I'm not saying the article is wrong. Clearly it raises some very good questions that need to be answered.

[jomadge.livejournal.com]

Hey, I used the word "that" four times in one sentence. THAT takes talent! *g*

Going to BED now.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

That was mentioned in the article.

I think that's where further study (immediately) should be done. It would be difficult to separate out the two, but when it's *across the board* in people who suffered from different conditions, for differing lengths of time, and those people are all suffering from the same debilitating weakness, you have to wonder what the common problem is--and that would be how the ICU keeps people under constant sedation and in bed for minimum amounts of trouble to the staff.

I'd also like to point out that it's still a practice (don't know how common it is) that operating on infants without anesthesia happens today. For years it was a commonly held belief in the medical community (at least with doctors) that infants don't remember pain, therefore don't FEEl pain, and it's okay to operate on them in highly complex, lengthy operations without anesthesia.

Bullshit. They're now discovering that infants DO feel pain, and their brains are affected by it.

And in another front, a couple decades ago, the technology and know-how was there to operate on infants and children with heart problems (major ones). Now, many of those children survived (yay!) HOWEVER the medical community did not follow-up on these children, who are now suffering from the after affects of surviving the surgery.

The AMA and doctors have a very bad habit of not following up in a methodical, scientific manner on the results of their treatments, especially on the formerly helpless, like the ICU and pediatric patients.

[whisper99.livejournal.com]

Like this is news? Heh. The general rule of thumb here in S. Florida is that you need to absolutely make sure you never, EVER leave anybody alone in the hospital (especially if they are over the age of 60) because you will end up with some kind of vegetable. Case in point, my great uncle was hit by a car - he must've been in his late 80's at the time. He was a spry old guy, always walked everywhere in his neighborhood. Anyway, the accident wasn't bad, he was mostly just knocked down and got his arms and knees scraped a bit. He picked himself up and WALKED home, he was fine. It wasn't until later that his niece insisted he go to the hospital to get checked out. Well, he WALKED into that hospital on his own and a few hours later when his niece was allowed to see him, he didn't recognize her. They wheeled him out three days later and he was never the same again. Oh and in case you are wondering, they found no injuries to him due to the car accident.

So yeah, not exactly news. But still scary as shit.

ETA - heh...should have read the article before posting. But still, hospitals in general scare me, ICU or no.

[gategrrl.livejournal.com]

My grandmother died in a hospital in an ICU after refusing to eat. She was done, and wanted to go. So I know what you mean.

The elderly are the least likely to recover from the "help" the receive in hospitals, and should my mother ever have to spend time in one due to a stroke (she already has, but she's currently in her 60s) I would make absolutely sure she doesn't spend any unneeded time alone in one.

What exactly happened to your great uncle? Was he given some drugs or something while he was in there?

[whisper99.livejournal.com]

Near as we can tell, they gave him some drugs to keep him quiet and pliable. He apparently wanted to go home and not spend the night.