Ventilators are the ‘life support’ for Covid patients, but El Pasoans using them face grim future

EL PASO, Texas -- "It's life and death," said Dr. Asad Omar with Las Palmas Medical Center.

"Ventilators work by us putting a tube down the mouth into the main airway to be able to get oxygen into the lungs," Omar said.

"In the simpler of terms, it is giving someone life support," he continued.

In the last five months if a patient gets on the machine, they will more than
likely not come off, according to the doctor.

"When Covid gets bad enough to the point where we have to put the person on the breathing machine, the chances of them surviving or unfortunately in this case passing away in this case are 80 to 90 percent in this case,"
Omar said.

He said the medical team at Las Palmas doesn't want to take that
statistical chance against the machine.

"The numbers are not what we are going with," Omar said when asked if there was a certain oxygen level the patient had to hit before being placed on the ventilator. "We give every patient a chance to see if they can do OK
without being on a ventilator even if their numbers are lower than we
expect.”

“If the the breathing gets to the point where you cannot sustain
your own breathing and we are at a point where either we put you on a
ventilator or the levels are so low or the breathing is so hard you cannot
maintain it, then we have to do it to sustain life,” he added.

But there is no guarantee you will survive.

"Even if you come out of it, it's a long recovery process after it," he
said. "The disease is so not forgiving. The ventilators days are long. You
become extremely weak and debilitating after being on it for days and days.”

Omar said it's best to avoid the ventilator by prevention. He
recommends distancing, wearing gloves and masks. He said the sacrifice will be worth it.