Swine Flu May Bring Surge in Hospitalizations

Oct. 9 -- THURSDAY, Oct. 8 (HealthDay News) -- Potentially foreshadowing the U.S. experience this fall and winter, Australian and New Zealand health authorities who have just gone through their flu season report "substantial" traffic in their intensive care units as a result of H1N1 swine flu infections.

Because winter in the Southern Hemisphere takes place during North America's summer, the severity of the flu season Down Under might presage the character of the coming flu season further north.

And a similar report, this time from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, confirms that H1N1-stricken patients cared for in American hospitals during April, May and June were more likely to be pregnant women or younger adults with underlying medical conditions.

Both reports were released online Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the findings did not surprise him.

"What we've already experienced in the spring and what we're experiencing now is that the [H1N1] virus had a predilection to infect young people and, when you look at people who required hospitalization because of complications, it's disproportionately weighted towards pregnant women and the very young and those with underlying conditions that compromise the immune response," Fauci stated. "It's not surprising. That's exactly the pattern that we've been seeing."

"We're seeing the same kinds of patients," echoed Dr. Tamara R. Kuittinen, an emergency physician with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

So far, that hospital has only seen one confirmed case of H1N1 along with a few suspicious cases, she said.

In the U.S. study, researchers at the CDC examined the medical charts of 272 people hospitalized for H1N1 influenza between April and mid-June of this year. They report that a quarter were admitted to the ICU, and 7 percent died. Nearly three-quarters of patients surveyed had one or more underlying medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart or lung ailments or pregnancy.