Manuela Wolgramm finally finds hope. In early January, his nephrologist told him that transplant activity was gradually resuming at the Kremlin-Bicêtre hospital, in the Paris suburbs. The 48-year-old Francilienne is awaiting a kidney transplant. During the first wave of Covid-19 in 2020, she received a letter from the hospital: due to the epidemic, graft harvesting had been stopped.
Since then, the waves have followed one another, and the wait has been prolonged. “Psychologically, it’s hard to live on dialysis. We can’t work, we can’t travel,” she describes, having to catch her breath several times to finish her sentences.
Difficult, too, not to see the consequences of the months that pass on his body: “I get out of breath more easily, I’m more tired. » Finally, there is the anxiety, as the coronavirus circulates like never before under the pressure of the Omicron variant, of being contaminated with weakened immune defenses.
“I have been living alone at home, in permanent confinement for two years”, she confides. The risk of death for patients awaiting a transplant is 20% in the event of infection with Covid-19, according to Renaloo, the association of patients with renal failure which accompanies it.
More complicated surgery
After two years of health crisis, the price to pay always seems higher for patients who have seen their operation canceled or their care put on hold once more with the fifth epidemic wave.
To cope with the influx of patients with Covid-19, many hospitals had to put a stop to part of their usual activity this winter. Particularly in certain regions: in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur or in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, it is a maximum deprogramming of surgical activity which was initiated in December 2021.
The noose is just beginning to loosen. In the Lyon region, the operating theaters, which found themselves running at alarming levels of 30% of their usual capacity during the holidays, rose to 50% activity at the start of the year.
“It has been two years since activity has been able to resume normally, emphasizes Doctor Vincent Piriou, who directs the medical commission for the establishment of the Hospices Civils de Lyon. Vital emergencies and oncological activity are well preserved during this wave, but we have reached a point where the “loss of chance” even affects patients requiring functional surgery. »
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