Swine Flu Can Move Quickly to Severe Illness

Oct. 13 -- MONDAY, Oct. 12 (HealthDay News) -- Canadian and Mexican intensive care units were swamped with patients who rapidly became critically ill with H1N1 flu this past spring and summer, new reports find.

Many of these patients were relatively healthy adolescents and young adults who needed to be treated in an intensive care unit (ICU) within a day or two of being admitted to the hospital, note doctors from both countries. Many patients required mechanical ventilators, say the reports, slated to be published in the Nov. 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The papers, coupled with another report released last week that detailed the impact of the pandemic on ICUs in Australia and New Zealand, indicate the need for the United States and other countries to prepare carefully for what very well could be an escalating number of hospitalized patients as the pandemic continues, experts said.

"These people were not just a little bit ill. They were spectacularly ill," said Dr. Anand Kumar, the Canadian lead author of one of the JAMA studies. "To see 40 patients like this simultaneously in the ICU, all struggling for their lives, all in the space of a few weeks -- that's really unusual."

"Without preparation, there would be some chance that some areas would be overwhelmed," Kumar said. "As long as we prepare, it should be handled."

Kumar, an associate professor in critical care and infectious disease at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, believes that "the value of this paper is to alert and sharpen the thinking of the authorities in terms of making sure that we do have strategies in place to mitigate what's likely to happen."

Another expert worried that many U.S. hospitals might not be up to the challenge.

"The concern is that we would have difficulty meeting the demand because our health-care system operates near capacity most of the time, and there's not a lot of excess capacity in the system," said Dr. John J. Treanor, a professor of medicine and of microbiology and immunology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. "I think there's a cause for alarm -- though not undue alarm -- because one would predict a pretty intense flu season and there will be a lot of demand placed on emergency rooms and hospitals."