EL TRIAJE EN PANDEMIA: FUNDAMENTOS ÉTICOS PARA LA ASIGNACIÓN DE RECURSOS DE SOPORTE VITAL AVANZADO EN ESCENARIOS DE ESCASEZ()

Pandemics and other global disasters regularly overwhelm humankind. These catastrophic events suddenly increase demand for health-care in emergency services, intensive care units, and for advanced life support devices. This imbalance requires complex decision-making in which scarce resources must be allocated in relation to high demand. Thus, health-care teams need to act under consensus criteria that guide their decisions and alleviate the heavy moral burden of selecting patients for therapies, excluding others. Triage is a strategy that allows to establish, under appropriate rationalities, objectives and criteria that facilitate complex decisions to achieve the best results. These strategies should consider the framework of intangible values that we appreciate and identify us culturally and socially, such as respect for life, equity, justice and freedom. However, in exceptional scenarios such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, where the health system may be overcome, priority goals should focus in order to save as many lives as possible and by mean the most humane, fair and efficient way possible. At the same time, hierarchies of classical values and principles of daily clinical practice should be redefined in an appropriate way to face this catastrophic scenario, under an ethics for public health, the greatest good for the most and the best care of those who cannot be cured.