How does being on a ventilator cause someone on it to have organ damage? I thought ventilators are just supposed to help you breathe?
In: Biology
I think I’m going to struggle with answering your question directly but I’ll try and clear some stuff up.
There are roughly 2 types of people who are ventilated. The 1st are people who won’t breathe on their own (head injury, drug intoxication) and the 2nd are people who you choose to take over their breathing (lung damage and lots of others).
The first group are easy in the way, you can place a breathing tube and connect them to a ventilator.
If I tried to do that to someone awake, it would be a disaster. In order to allow this to happen, you have to give drugs to reduce their consciousness, their pain and their ability to move/cough. These drugs will do damage over enough time even to healthy individuals.
In the case of covid, there are already lots of reasons why they may be in multi organ failure. Sepsis or septic shock reduces blood flow through the organ. Blood clots do the same for different reasons.
There is still a lot more to write about this but I think the important part is that putting someone on a ventilator is risky and precarious. It is usually only done if there is little other option.
As a side note, lots of people are ventilated under general anaesthetic but the vast vast majority of these people are not critically ill and therefore it is very different.
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