# 3934
From the BMJ (British Medical Journal) this morning, a news report indicating that the percentage of those hospitalized for Swine flu in the UK requiring ICU beds is going up.
Last July only about 7% of those hospitalized required critical care, whereas now that number is about 21%.
While ICU units are obviously under increasing patient loads, this change in admittance ratio needn’t signify a change in the virus. Doctors may simply be less inclined to hospitalize less-severely ill patients today than they were four months ago.
In absolute terms, however, the number of new ICU admissions for this virus in the UK is at a new weekly high.
Number of swine flu patients going into intensive care is rising
Published 2 November 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4528
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4528Nayanah Siva
1 London
The proportion of patients in hospital with swine flu who have been admitted to intensive care continues to rise in England, said the chief medical officer, Liam Donaldson, last week.In the week to 28 October 157 of 751 hospitalised patients with the illness (21%) had to go into intensive care, up from 63 of 840 patients (7.5%) in the last week of July, when the epidemic reached a peak before the school holidays began.
"There is an eerie similarity to what happened in Australia," said Professor Donaldson at a press briefing on 29 October. At one point during Australia’s winter months of June to August 25% of hospitalised patients were in critical care.
Children under the age of 5 years had the highest rate of hospitalisation in the week to 28 October, Professor Donaldson said, and younger patients admitted to critical care were much less likely than older patients to have underlying health conditions.
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