SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Nov. 28, 2022 (Gephardt Daily) — Primary Children’s Hospital is postponing about 50 nonemergency surgeries and procedures this week amid a recent surge in patients with the respiratory illness RSV.
The Salt Lake City children’s hospital has been experiencing extremely high numbers of pediatric patients in recent months, in part due to a surge of children with respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, hospital officials said.
“Our patient volumes are exceeding typical winter surge levels, and the hospital has been at or near capacity for several consecutive weeks,” said Dustin Lipson, Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital administrator. “This is combined with high volumes of patients coming to the emergency department for other various illnesses and injuries.”
To care for the higher volume of patients and meet staffing needs, the hospital plans to delay up to 50 prescheduled, nonemergency procedures and surgeries that require inpatient stays, equating to about 10% of all surgeries and procedures at the hospital, Intermountain officials said Monday.
“We’re contacting patient families to reschedule some surgeries and procedures,” Lipson said. “To be clear, patients who urgently need surgeries and procedures will receive them, as is always the case.”
Dr. Andrew Pavia, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at University of Utah Health and Primary Children’s Hospital, called the recent surge in RSV cases “unprecedented.”
“This has been really an unprecedented surge in RSV, accompanied now by a fairly large amount of influenza,” Pavia said via video during a news conference Monday. “Just over the last week [influenza cases have] increased quite substantially. And behind all this, COVID is increasing slowly.”
Pavia said the majority of the hospitalized children have RSV, “but there’s a substantial number with flu, as well as with COVID, and some with more than one virus.”
The hospital has been operating at “pretty close to full capacity since summer,” he said.
“So we’ve taken this action really as a way to provide the best and safest care to the kids who need it. Unfortunately, it does cause inconvenience for some families who are having scheduled surgeries canceled,” Pavia said.
Those most at risk for RSV include children under 1 year old and to a lesser degree those under 2 years old, or people with severe heart disease, he said.
“We don’t have a vaccine for RSV, but if you keep people away from people who are sniffling, coughing and sneezing, you can prevent them from getting RSV,” Pavia said.
That means keeping infants at home, not letting sick people come visit, and wearing masks, he said.
“You have no way of knowing whether that mild symptom you have is dry air, inversion or RSV, because it can be very mild in adults and very severe and young infants. So protect them,” Pavia said.
