The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on drug use

Aifa-Osmed data highlight the trend in the use of drugs for critically ill patients admitted to intensive care due to coronavirus

(Photo: Salvatore Laporta / Kontrolab / Getty Images) Two pandemic waves in the course of 2020, an increase in infections that translate into an increase in hospitalizations in intensive care, which in turn have led to a rise in the consumption of drugs for critically ill patients. The latter is one of the ways to tell what happened last year through the 2020 update of the Aifa-Osmed report The use of drugs in Italy.

Presented on Friday 23 July during a press conference, is the document that is published annually by the Italian Medicines Agency and accounts for the consumption of medicines and the related expenditure in our country. The latest document obviously could not fail to address the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and did so by showing the trend in the use of drugs for critically ill patients. Those, that is, employed in intensive care units. The graph shows how it went.

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Each column represents a two-month period: the higher it is, the greater the number of packages per 10 thousand inhabitants used daily. The color tends to orange if there is an increase compared to the same period of the previous year, to blue if there is a contraction. The filter in the lower part (top left for desktop readers) allows you to view the situation in a single region.

As you can see, the moments of greatest consumption of drugs for critically ill patients, both in absolute numbers both as an increase compared to the previous year, coincide with the second and sixth two months of last year. That is March and April, the months of the first lockdown, and November and December, when Italy was hit by the second wave. The plastic image of how drug consumption is linked to a greater presence of patients in intensive care, just look at the Sars-CoV-2 positive curve admitted to these wards.

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As can be seen, the two peaks in hospitalizations are recorded in the second and sixth two months of last year. Those, that is, who have seen a greater consumption of drugs for critically ill patients. Nationally, March and April saw the use of these preparations increase by 91% compared to the same period of the previous year, while between November and December the increase was 120%.

More in Specifically, the report reads, “there was a very high use of oxygen which, alone, represents 58% of expenditure and 83% of total consumption”. Furthermore, "strong increases were observed in the use of various injecting drugs including: curaries (+ 181.2%), ascorbic acid (+ 102.7%), hypnotics and sedatives (+ 83.9%) and general anesthetics ( + 54.6%) ". Again, "a high increase in expenditure (+ 113.7%) is observed for propofol, an anesthetic used for the sedation of mechanically ventilated patients". These numbers are certainly not surprising, but which help to better understand what the pandemic represented for the national health system.


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Topics

Coronavirus Long Covid Coronavirus numbers Covid-19 therapies globalData.fldTopic = " Coronavirus, Long Covid, Coronavirus numbers, Covid-19 therapies "

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