Managed by pulmonologist Fiorella Pacetti, those who have been hospitalized and needed ventilation are called back for a visit
IVREA. Fiorella Pacetti, 43 years old in September, is the only pulmonologist on duty at the Ivrea hospital. Hired indefinitely in Asl / To4 in December 2018, following a competition where she had arrived earlier, she was already working in Ivrea with a non-definitive contract. Fiorella Pacetti thinks, in essence, that it is the people before the places that do the services and that is why she has started an outpatient clinic in which people who have been hospitalized due to Covid and have been subjected to ventilation.
“The project was elaborated and submitted to the management already last year – explains Pacetti – and during the summer of 2020 we began to call the patients who, in the first phase of the pandemic, had been hospitalized and had needed breathing support. “. There were about 150 patients to call a year ago, probably more than double today. The ASL / To4 had purchased a new spirometer for the activity of the new post Covid clinic.
“The outpatient clinic – he adds – is structured for a global care of the patient, with a multidisciplinary pneumological, internal and laboratory and also cardiological evaluation and therefore provides for a collaboration with various specialists”. «It is important to be able to review the radiological picture of patients who have been affected by bilateral interstitial pneumonia a few months after admission – he underlines – to take stock both from a respiratory and pneumological point of view. There is in fact the risk of developing a chronic disease ». Not to mention the scientific interest in everything related to the pandemic.
Last summer, the clinic was therefore left, except for having to stop for a new wave that had put the hospitals filled up again. Pacetti had been appointed head of the Covid area. At the time of maximum pressure on hospitals, in Ivrea there were four Covid wards with over fifty patients, all ventilated. Compared to the – very hard – impact of the pandemic at the beginning of March 2020, when the first hospitalizations began in the ASL / To4 hospitals, autumn was even more complex to manage both in terms of the number of accesses in departments that from a psychological point of view. “There were so many cases – Pacetti recalls – and with very, very bad radiological pictures”.
Now, with the elimination of hospitalizations, in Ivrea, a single Covid ward has remained active with few places currently empty, but ready to welcome any patients who need treatment or who, as positive, cannot remain in other departments .
Meanwhile, the numbers of people to call for visits have increased a lot. There are also two nurses in the clinic and two young doctors collaborate who, in the most difficult period, were assigned to the Covid wards with fixed-term hires from the Crisis Unit to deal with the pandemic. “During the visit we make a global reassessment of the situation – he concludes -. Many patients have recovered perfectly”.