Guest guest Posted November 17, 2009 Report Share Posted November 17, 2009 Study worst cases of flu, group urges Tom Blackwell, National Post Published: Monday, November 09, 2009 More money is urgently needed to study people made dangerously ill by the H1N1 flu -- even if they account for only a small fraction of pandemic patients, say critical-care physicians who complain their key field has been chronically starved of research funds. The doctors who preside over intensive-care units (ICUs) and fight to save the sickest of influenza sufferers say they managed to cobble together a partial network of Canadian hospitals earlier this summer to track the characteristics of severe flu patients. The resulting study, published in a major American journal last month, was viewed around the world as ground-breaking, but it was done without any federal funding, they say. Intensive-care medicine has generally attracted relatively little research grant money, despite the fact it accounts for a huge proportion of health care spending -- estimated by some at 1% of Canada's gross domestic product, the ICU doctors say. " The intensive care unit is often kind of the harbinger for any kind of severe illness in the community, because the sickest patients end up being cared for in the ICU, " said Dr. Marshall, head of the Canadian critical care trials group. " We are in a sense the canary in the coal mine. " Stepped-up study efforts might help solve the disturbing mystery of why a small number of relatively healthy young people are made so ill by H1N1 -- probably a matter of genetics --and uncover new ways to treat them, he said. The Canadian Institute for Health Research and the Public Health Agency of Canada recently offered critical-care medicine some funding for H1N1 study. Dr. -, head of the agency, said in an interview this week that additional research in the area is important. Millions more is needed, though, to set up a system involving all ICUs in the country to record and share basic information on each of their patients, said Dr. Rob Fowler, critical-care physician at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. The Ontario government funded such a project earlier this year and it is proving invaluable, he said. " If you're in the business of preventing people from dying from H1N1, then you are the people you need to focus on, " said Dr. Fowler. The intensivists' pleas underline, though, what some see as a subtle tension in pandemic-flu medicine between the infectious-disease specialists who encounter a wide range of patients and often focus on prevention, and critical-care doctors who treat only the most ill. The infection experts have been more apt to remind Canadians that the vast majority of pandemic-flu patients endure only mild illness; the critical-care doctors have spoken out about the desperately ill minority. " Never was there a group that so longed to make themselves seem more important than everyone else than critical care medicine, " quipped one communicable disease specialist earlier this month. " For them, all the world is a tragedy. But you have to be careful when you talk to the general public not to scare them. " http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=2200768 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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