ReviewBritish medical bulletin2021
Ethics of ICU triage during COVID-19.
Review in British medical bulletin, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Pooled it
- No rule, no accountability: Why intensive care needs a statutory triage framework.Journal of the Intensive Care Society · 2026Article
- Ethical, legal, and social issues of AI use in emergency healthcare: a scoping review.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2026Article
- The expanding role of artificial intelligence in personalised medicine: from innovation to individualized care.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Review
- Neural network for natural language processing to determine treatment urgency in an ophthalmology emergency department.The British journal of ophthalmology · 2025Article
- How Will AI Shape the Future of Pandemic Response? Early Clues From Data Analytics.Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis · 2025Review
- Who decides who goes first? Taking democracy seriously in micro-allocative healthcare decisions.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2025Article
- Research Ethics Challenges, Controversies and Difficulties in Intensive Care Units-A Systematic Review of Theoretical Concepts.Nursing reports (Pavia, Italy) · 2025Review
- The role of social justice in triage revisited: a threshold conception.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2025Review
- Assessing outcomes in traumatic brain injury: Helsinki score versus Glasgow coma scale.European journal of trauma and emergency surgery : official publication of the European Trauma Society · 2024Article
- What are the views of Quebec and Ontario citizens on the tiebreaker criteria for prioritizing access to adult critical care in the extreme context of a COVID-19 pandemic?BMC medical ethics · 2024Article
- Rapid triage and transfer system for patients with proven Covid-19 at emergency department.Journal of applied biomedicine · 2024Article
- Setting Up a Just and Fair ICU Triage Process during a Pandemic: A Systematic Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Nucleated red blood cells are a late biomarker in predicting intensive care unit mortality in patients with COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome: an observational cohort study.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Observational
- Public perspectives on COVID-19 triage protocols for access to critical care in extreme pandemic context.PloS one · 2024Article
- Optimizing artificial intelligence in sepsis management: Opportunities in the present and looking closely to the future.Journal of intensive medicine · 2024Review
- The influence of explainable vs non-explainable clinical decision support systems on rapid triage decisions: a mixed methods study.BMC medicine · 2023Article
- Intelligent decision support in medical triage: are people robust to biased advice?Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- Triage of Critically Ill Patients: Characteristics and Outcomes of Patients Refused as Too Well for Intensive Care.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- The positive impact of COVID-19 on critical care: from unprecedented challenges to transformative changes, from the perspective of young intensivists.Annals of intensive care · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionThe coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has placed intensive care units (ICU) triage at the center of bioethical discussions. National and international triage guidelines emerged from professional and governmental bodies and have led to controversial discussions about which criteria-e.g. medical prognosis, age, life-expectancy or quality of life-are ethically acceptable. The paper presents the main points of agreement and disagreement in triage protocols and reviews the ethical debate surrounding them. SOURCES OF DATA: Published articles, news articles, book chapters, ICU triage guidelines set out by professional societies and health authorities. AREAS OF AGREEMENT: Points of agreement in the guidelines that are widely supported by ethical arguments are (i) to avoid using a first come, first served policy or quality-adjusted life-years and (ii) to rely on medical prognosis, maximizing lives saved, justice as fairness and non-discrimination. AREAS OF CONTROVERSY: Points of disagreement in existing guidelines and the ethics literature more broadly regard the use of exclusion criteria, the role of life expectancy, the prioritization of healthcare workers and the reassessment of triage decisions. GROWING POINTS: Improve outcome predictions, possibly aided by Artificial intelligence (AI); develop participatory approaches to drafting, assessing and revising triaging protocols; learn from experiences with implementation of guidelines with a view to continuously improve decision-making. AREAS TIMELY FOR DEVELOPING RESEARCH: Examine the universality vs. context-dependence of triaging principles and criteria; empirically test the appropriateness of triaging guidelines, including impact on vulnerable groups and risk of discrimination; study the potential and challenges of AI for outcome and preference prediction and decision-support.
Indexed as
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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.