New Evidence Suggests COVID-19 Patients On Ventilators Usually Survive

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/15/856768020/new-evidence-suggests-covid-19-patients-on-ventilators-usually-survive

COVID-19 has given ventilators an undeservedly bad reputation, says Dr. Colin Cooke, an associate professor of medicine in the division of pulmonary and critical care at the University of Michigan.

"It's always disheartening to know that some people are out there saying if you end up on a ventilator it's a death sentence, which is not what we are experiencing — and I don't think it's what the data are showing," Cooke says.

Early reports from China, the United Kingdom and Seattle found mortality rates as high as 90% among patients on ventilators. And more recently, a study of some New York hospitals seemed to show a mortality rate of 88%.

But Cooke and others say the New York figure was misleading because the analysis included only patients who had either died or been discharged. "So folks who were actually in the midst of fighting their illness were not being included in the statistic of patients who were still alive," he says.