Doctor in Klamath Falls seeing younger and sicker patients, Aug. 13

Dr. Grant Niskanen, Vice President of Medical Affairs at Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls, recently spoke with the Oregon Health Authority about what he is seeing in his Southern Oregon community hospital. “We had one person a couple weeks ago that got a lung transplant … we have a second person that now is being evaluated for a lung transplant, and when I talk about the patients — like nine or 10 that are currently in our hospital, that’s for an acute infection — that’s not talking about the four or five that have been here for 20 plus days, who are no longer infected, but still need such amounts of high flow oxygen that we’re unable to send them home.” Dr. Niskanen says the key to all of this is to get vaccinated. “If we all were vaccinated. This would shut down the spread of the virus and shut down the mutations and the variants that are occurring. We’re talking about lives here. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of the vaccinations. “As a physician, what we really do is just support you. As a patient told me yesterday, (who’s on oxygen) — they said — ‘Can you give me something to make me feel better?’ Well, no we’re just supporting you at this point and trying to help you breathe as best as possible. It’s a very frustrating illness for both physicians and nurses to care for and to watch these people go on and get progressively sick.” He says almost all the patients he treats with COVID-19 ask him later if they can get the vaccine once they’re sick in the hospital. “By the time you’re in the hospital and critically ill, no, it doesn’t work like that. And all of them say, ‘If I had known about this and how I felt and the effect on my family, I would have gotten the vaccine.’”