Airway management and intubation guidelines for COVID-19

A/Prof David Brewster is lead author on MJA
publication for COVID-19 airway management

COVID-19 is shorthand for 'SARS-COV-2' - that is, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. Those patients who get sick enough with COVID-19 to need care in intensive care units (ICU) have profoundly congested lungs, and need highly specialised care and often, intervention.

Associate Professor David Brewster is lead author of national guidelines for airway management and intubation for COVID-19, published in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) on 1 May.

ICU fatalities linked to after-hours discharge

Patients who are discharged from intensive care units (ICUs) after-hours have a higher chance of death than those discharged during the day, a new study has found.
Findings published today in Intensive Care Medicine, show that one in seven ICU patients continue to be discharged to general wards after-hours, and this has not changed for the past eight years. Lead researcher Dr Dashiell Gantner, from the Monash University Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Science, said it remains unclear why practices have not changed. Dr Gantner is an Intensive Care Fellow at the Alfred. See 18/08/2014 Monash story.