Activists Want to Put ‘Net Zero’ In Cardiovascular Surgery
Major heart surgery is fraught with clinical danger and requires weeks of recuperation. But it is often a life-saving procedure, and various options to repair valves and widen arteries are available
The type of operation is determined on strict medical grounds based on factors such as age and health condition of the patient.
The last thing you might need if faced with such a medical decision is some burk talking about ‘climate change’.
Welcome to the ‘net zero’ fantasy world, where a New York group of medical ‘scientists’ and activists are suggesting such decisions could be partly based on saving the emission of ‘greenhouse gases’.
The actual amount saved between two common operations discussed is said to be at most 390 kgs, about the same amount of carbon dioxide one human breathes out in a year. One human, it might be noted, among eight billion who live and breathe on the planet.
It took no less than 19 medical and activist midwits to come up with this twaddle. “The impact of climate change is increasingly recognised as a major public health determinant,” it was said.
Commenting on what are piddling amounts of CO2, the authors added that their findings “should potentially be considered when making population level decisions and guidelines moving into the future”.
What next, we might ask – a medical crackdown on human farting, a notorious practice that raises methane levels in the atmosphere. Known flatulence boosters include many popular antibiotics, diabetes medication and fibre supplements.
And why not go full ‘net zero’ mental and ban cabbage and cauliflower in hospital meals?
The authors considered two heart procedures to cure severe aortic degeneration – namely surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) and transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). The first procedure involves open-heart surgery.
The valve inserted is longer lasting, but recovery can be slow, and as a result it is generally recommended for lower risk, younger patients. The second procedure is considerably less invasive, but valve durability is less.
The procedures are not interchangeable, and the medical choice is made after a thorough evaluation by medics considering risk, anatomy, current health and finally the individual choice of the patient.
SAVR might be considered a better choice for long-term success, while TAVR is better for higher risk patients who might prioritise shorter-term outcomes.
A cobbled together cock-and-bull story about CO2 and virtue signalling about supposedly saving the planet is the last thing anyone needs when facing difficult heart surgery.
Alas, the ‘net zero’ bug is endemic and has taken hold, infecting the thinking and practice in many medical institutions.
In the UK, war seems to have been declared on the safe and popular anaesthetic nitrous oxide.
This pain reliever is no laughing matter so far as the ‘net zero’ nutters at Britain’s National Health Service are concerned.
According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, the use of anaesthetics, which also include isoflurane, desflurane and sevoflurane, has been identified as a “carbon hotspot”.
One of the substitutes for nitrous oxide is methoxyflurance, long banned in the United States after concerns about kidney and liver damage were raised.
According to a 2021 letter published in the Guardian, Dame Julia Slingo, former Met Office Chief Scientist, and Dr Mary Slingo, Senior Registrar in Anaesthetics at Southampton General Hospital, said that any impact of the gases’ tiny emissions and radiative forcing on the climate “will, quite frankly, be ‘lost in translation’”.
The effect was said to be “vanishingly small,” and invoking ‘climate change’ as a reason for abandoning their use “does not hold up scientifically.”
Around the world, medical practitioners are being guilt-tripped to align patient outcomes to wider political climate goals. Low-‘carbon’ ‘solutions’ are widely touted, as we have seen in the suggestions that anaesthetics and pain relievers should be swapped for so-called low-‘carbon’ options.
Asthma inhalers are another target, with dry powder favoured over gas-propellant metered-dose dispensers. The latter has a higher ‘carbon footprint’ due to their use of gases such as hydrofluoroalkane.
Of course, it might be observed that the ‘carbon’ footprint of the dispenser types is practically none for the first, and almost unmeasurable for the second. Needless to say, there are sufficient differences between the two to justify using one over the other on medical grounds alone.
These include health condition, inspiratory ability and training on proper techniques. Neither dispenser is less efficient in delivering the drug to the lungs, but their effectiveness varies over a wide variety of specific conditions.
In no way should their use be based on the diddly squat difference they make to supposedly ‘saving the planet’.
In a sane medical world, this would be considered outside the realm of best patient care and everything to do with the luxury belief in the command-and-control ‘net zero’ fantasy.
See more here dailysceptic.org
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