ArticleAmerican journal of respiratory and critical care medicine2021
Mitigating Inequities and Saving Lives with ICU Triage during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Article in American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 63 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
63 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Can evidence drive health equity in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond?Journal of public health policy · 2024Pooled it
- Artificial intelligence for mechanical ventilation: systematic review of design, reporting standards, and bias.British journal of anaesthesia · 2022Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Four-organ SOFA score as a potential tool to triage use of continuous kidney replacement therapy in COVID-19 patients with acute kidney injury: a retrospective two-center study.Renal failure · 2026Article
- Simulating crisis triage: a methodological framework for evaluating ventilator allocation under crisis standards of care.BMC medical research methodology · 2026Article
- Early prognostication of septic shock in Korean adults aged 80 years and over: serum albumin combined with Sequential Organ Failure Assessment Score.Acute and critical care · 2026Article
- Evaluation of SOFA-2 Score Performance Across Demographic Subgroups: An External Validation Study Using MIMIC-IV.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Proposed intensive care unit triage models lack predictive validity for hospital mortality to deal with catastrophes: insights from a cohort study.Critical care science · 2026Article
- [First come, first failed : The rise and fall of Germany's Triage law].Die Anaesthesiologie · 2025Article
- Ethical considerations of artificial intelligence in emergency medicine for triage and resource allocation: a scoping review.Clinical and experimental emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Challenging ageism in eCPR: the quiet discrimination.Critical care (London, England) · 2025Article
- Digital health equity: Crafting sustainable pathways.PLOS digital health · 2025Article
- Minnesota Hospitals' Plans for Implementing Statewide Guidance on Allocation of Scarce Critical Care Resources During the COVID-19 Pandemic.Mayo Clinic proceedings. Innovations, quality & outcomes · 2024Article
- Social Disparities and Critical Illness during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: A Narrative Review.Critical care clinics · 2024Review
- Operationalisation of health equity principles in physiotherapy hospital triage policies.International journal for equity in health · 2024Article
- Rationing, Responsibility, and Vaccination during COVID-19: A Conceptual Map.The American journal of bioethics : AJOB · 2024Article
- Impact of the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic on emergency department-to-intensive care unit admissions in Korea: an interrupted time-series analysis.BMC emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Setting Up a Just and Fair ICU Triage Process during a Pandemic: A Systematic Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Public perspectives on COVID-19 triage protocols for access to critical care in extreme pandemic context.PloS one · 2024Article
- Denial as an ethical problem: the example of ICU triage in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.Asian journal of medical humanities · 2024Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Commented on by
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The burdens of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic have fallen disproportionately on disadvantaged groups, including the poor and Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities. There is substantial concern that the use of existing ICU triage protocols to allocate scarce ventilators and critical care resources-most of which are designed to save as many lives as possible-may compound these inequities. As governments and health systems revisit their triage guidelines in the context of impending resource shortages, scholars have advocated a range of alternative allocation strategies, including the use of a random lottery to give all patients in need an equal chance of ICU treatment. However, both the save-the-most-lives approach and random allocation are seriously flawed. In this Perspective, we argue that ICU triage policies should simultaneously promote population health outcomes and mitigate health inequities. These ethical goals are sometimes in conflict, which will require balancing the goals of maximizing the number of lives saved and distributing health benefits equitably across society. We recommend three strategies to mitigate health inequities during ICU triage: introducing a correction factor into patients' triage scores to reduce the impact of baseline structural inequities; giving heightened priority to individuals in essential, high-risk occupations; and rejecting use of longer-term life expectancy and categorical exclusions as allocation criteria. We present a practical triage framework that incorporates these strategies and attends to the twin public health goals of promoting population health and social justice.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.