Number of swine flu patients going into intensive care is rising

doi:10.1136/bmj.b4528

Published 2 November 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b4528
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b4528

News

Number of swine flu patients going into intensive care is rising

Nayanah Siva

¹ London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The proportion of patients in hospital with swine flu who havebeen 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 withthe illness (21%) had to go into intensive care, up from 63of 840 patients (7.5%) in the last week of July, when the epidemicreached a peak before the school holidays began.

View larger version (19K):

View larger version (28K):

"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 Juneto August 25% of hospitalised patients were in critical care.

Children under the age of 5 years had the highest rate of hospitalisationin the week to 28 October, Professor Donaldson said, and youngerpatients admitted to critical care were much less likely thanolder patients . . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon Add to Technorati Technorati What's this?