Cleveland: Childrens hospital filled with flu patients
Maureen Kyle
Updated: 10/14/2009 8:27:32 AM Posted: 10/14/2009 7:38:29
CLEVELAND — Waiting rooms at emergency care clinics, doctors’ offices and local hospitals are busy this season with parents concerned about their child’s cough, fever and other seemingly viral symptoms.
Even though only the most serious cases get a child admitted to a hospital, the number of sick kids one local hospital sees is concerning.
“I have chronic pancreatitis, diabetes and lupus.”
Mercedes Vaughn is always in and out of Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, and never before has she seen nearly every room filled with kids.
“Half of this floor, the kids have the flu, so they’re not allowed out of their room.”
“The emergency room is currently seeing about one and a half to two times the number of patients that they saw at this point last year and the outpatient clinics are also very very busy,” says Dr. Phil Toltzis, an infectious disease specialist with Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital.
Toltzis says only ten percent of the children actually get admitted into the hospital, only those in severe respiratory distress or extreme dehydration. Still, the beds are nearly at capacity.
So what if this pandemic gets worse?
“We’ve already made immediate plans to expand our emergency room and expand our in patient beds so we can begin to accommodate more patients.”
If one greater Cleveland area hospital fills up, all are in partnership to take on patients turned away.
“If in fact things were to become so severe, that despite those measures every hospital bed was filled, then there are a number of plans some of those would include for example stopping routine surgery so that beds that were filled by those who were not affected by the flu would become open.”
Although Dr. Toltzis doesn’t think the swine flu pandemic will get to that level, he believes there’s a chance we haven’t seen the worst.
“Its going to be tight, there’s no question about it. Its going to be the situation where we are going to sort of be walking the tight rope every day trying to make sure we’re finding the appropriate number of beds and getting children discharged who don’t require anymore in an efficient manner.”
As for Mercedes, she’s going to take all precautions to guarantee she goes home.
“Just all the germs that’s going around. I want to get my flu shot and my H1N1 shot. “
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