(5 Sep 2020) After nearly two months of intensive hospital care, most of the time hooked up to tubes or sedated, Francisco Espana took a moment this week to fill his ailing lungs with the fresh air of a Barcelona beach front.
Laying on a hospital bed at the beach promenade and surrounded by a doctor and three nurses who constantly monitored his vitals, Espana briefly closed his eyes and absorbed as much vitamin D from the sun as possible.
For Espana, who works in a local market and has a passion for music, the memories of 52 days in intensive care are blurry.
The warm rendezvous, cheering and taking photos, was followed by a quick update on everything that Espana had missed, including the latest developments in soccer: Real Madrid winning La Liga and the Barcelona debacle, first the shameful 8-2 loss that knocked them out of the Champions League and the drama over the future of talisman Leo Messi.
A medical team is studying how short trips to the beach just across the street from Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar – which appropriately translates as Hospital of the Seas – may influence the recovery of COVID-19 patients and others subjected to long and sometimes traumatic intensive hospital care.
The study, explained Dr. Judith Marín, is part of a program to “humanise” intensive care units, which the group had been experimenting with for two years before the coronavirus pandemic hit Spain.
The strict isolation protocols that had to be adopted since mid-March undid months of effort to bring intensive care unit (ICU) patients closer to their relatives and connect those working in the units with the rest of the hospital, the doctor said.
In April, the hospital was operating several additional ICU wards and expanded its normal capacity from 18 patients to 67.
Since re-starting the program in early June, the hospital has anecdotally noticed that even ten minutes in front of the Mediterranean Sea can improve a patient’s emotional attitude.
The team now wants to start logging progress to quantify if the therapy aids in the mid and long-term recovery of COVID-19 patients.
Spain managed to bring down its contagion curve with a strict three month lockdown that ended on June 21.
But the country now leads Europe’s new wave of infections, with a surge that has brought over half a million cases since the onset of the pandemic.
About 29,500 people have died.
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