Ventilators are the go-to way physicians treat serious cases of COVID-19, but some patients at Wellington Regional Medical Center in Florida started refusing breathing tubes a couple of weeks ago.
Some would "initially refuse and then beg us for it just before they tap out," said Dr. Rob Harrell, a cardiac surgeon who is the medical director of the hospital's intensive care unit.
Physicians from the Palm Beach suburb of Wellington, in Salt Lake City, Boston and elsewhere were stumped and frustrated by a medical journal report last month that 88% of COVID-19 patients placed on ventilators died in a New York hospital system. Their own death rates were more like 20% and nearly always involved people older than 80, especially those with severe chronic health conditions.
The study out a week later found less than 17% of COVID-19 patients on ventilators at Massachusetts General Hospital died.
In the correction, Northwell said only 24.5% of the coronavirus patients on ventilators died or been discharged. The lower percentage adjusts the death rate to exclude everyone on ventilators who were still alive and battling the virus at the time the study ended.