As long as sufficient resources are available, all patients requiring intensive care are admitted and treated according to established criteria. If an emergency situation occurs with a large number of seriously ill patients, rationing decisions will be necessary, placing considerable burdens on medical staff. This makes it all the more important that uniform criteria for intensive-care unit (ICU) admission and continued occupancy should be applied throughout Switzerland.

The SAMS, together with the Swiss Society for Intensive Care Medicine (SGI), has drawn up guidelines that form the basis for such serious decisions. The guidelines supplement the SAMS Guidelines «Intensive-care interventions» and thus concern only a small proportion of patients infected with the coronavirus, namely the group of severely ill patients requiring intensive care. Patients with COVID-19 and other patients requiring intensive care are treated according to the same criteria.

The guidelines on the triage for intensive-care treatment under resource scarcity were published on 20 March 2020. They will be continuously adapted if experience in practice or new scientific findings so require. You can find the latest version with publication date on this page. The previous versions can be found here.