Center Director Robert Truog, Executive Director Christine Mitchell, and Harvard Medical School Dean George Daley are coauthors of a March 23 perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled, “The Toughest Triage — Allocating Ventilators in a Pandemic.”

“Although shortages of other goods and services may lead to deaths, in most cases it will be the combined effects of a variety of shortages that will result in worse outcomes. Mechanical ventilation is different. When patients’ breathing deteriorates to the point that they need a ventilator, there is typically only a limited window during which they can be saved. And when the machine is withdrawn from patients who are fully ventilator-dependent, they will usually die within minutes. Unlike decisions regarding other forms of life-sustaining treatment, the decision about initiating or terminating mechanical ventilation is often truly a life-or-death choice,” write the authors.

Read the full article in NEJM.