In the News

Dr. David Plummer says when people suffer from extreme hypothermia the cold temperature slows down their blood flow and metabolism, reducing their body’s need for oxygen.

He says he’s handled up to 30 cases similar to Vig’s over the last few years with an ECMO machine that pumps a person’s blood through a heater to warm their organs from the inside. More often than not, they do recover.

“It’s like hibernation. There are species that have perfected that, but we’re not one of them,” said Plummer, an emergency room physician at HCMC.

“I think done in certain quantities, it’s not as harmful as you think it is,” said Dr. Woubeshet Ayenew, a cardiologist at Hennepin Healthcare who also enjoys a couple cups himself. “I do not want three [cups] to be the floor but rather the ceiling people are thinking about. So a maximum of about three cups of coffee is what I get out of [the study].”

“We were in crisis for different reasons at different points throughout the pandemic,” said Dr. John Hick, an emergency room physician who regularly advised the Walz administration on hospital crisis planning.

“Once people show up and their friends show up, they are ready to go back out there and retaliate,” Galloway said. “So our job is to calm down and try to get them to understand that, hey, your life is valued, so let’s not go back out there and do something to derail that.” – Kentral Galloway, Next Step Program Director. 

“Our inpatient hospitalizations are down almost half of what they were last week,” said Dr. Deepti Pandita, Hennepin Healthcare’s chief health information officer. “Our pediatric hospitalizations are down, which is good news. And in clinic, we are seeing less and less patients acutely sick with COVID.”

“Right now is not the time,” said Dr. Hannah Lichtsinn, an internist and pediatrician at Hennepin Healthcare. “The American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC both recommend universal masking for students and staff at schools and have made no recommendation to stop it.”

You’ve probably heard the saying that someone died from a broken heart.  Is that true?  Can that really happen?  Dr. David Hilden from Hennepin Healthcare> says yes, but it is rare.

“Yes, people absolutely should still be masking when they’re inside,” said Dr. Hannah Lichtsinn, a pediatrician and internal medicine doctor with Hennepin Healthcare. She went on to say, “Even though we’re past the peak of the omicron wave, we’re still seeing really high rates of infection.”

“I think it might be a little premature given where we are with the hospital. We’re still at numbers that were reflective at our peak a year ago,” said Hennepin Healthcare pediatrician Dr. Stacene Maroushek. She also said while capacity is better compared to last month, inpatient care remains stressed. They do anticipate hospitalizations should improve as cases keep falling.

“If you just take the FDA at face value, you’re giving Paxlovid to an awful lot of people who will not benefit,” Dr. John Hick, an emergency physician at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, said.

For now, all the leading indicators for pandemic activity in Minnesota — whether it’s COVID cases, the statewide positivity rate or patients in hospitals and intensive care — are trending favorably, said Dr. Dan Hoody, the interim chief medical officer at Hennepin Healthcare.

Hospitals aren’t out of the woods, Hoody said, because staff outages remain higher than they were in previous surges. Even so, he said it was “reassuring to think that in the coming weeks — with both the downstream impact on acute care from all these favorable leading indicators coming to fruition, as well as more staff coming back into the ranks — that we should expect patient flow and acute care access to continue to improve.”

“I’m actually quite hopeful because it seems like, at least anecdotally in our clinic, and some of our numbers, we’ve turned the corner,” said 

Hearty Minnesotans may simply want to shrug the arctic chill, but don’t underestimate the challenges and dangers that negative temperatures bring, said Dr. Thomas Masters, a physician in Hennepin County Medical Center’s department of emergency medicine.

“Cold does not care how strong you are,” he said.

“After my bout with COVID, I became a vaccine advocate. I started talking to the world about it, encouraging people to get vaccinated.” – Michelle Davenport

“I am seeing a lot of people with permanent disabilities. They’re not the same people they were before they had COVID,” says Kenyatta Carroll, RN.

The bitter cold changes things for doctors at Hennepin Healthcare too, “I know we’re going to be busy, I know we’re going to be seeing a lot more cases of frostbite than we would normally be, so we’re prepared for it.” Dr. Thomas Masters said on Monday.

“We will see more Greek letters,” said Dr. David Hilden at a Twin Cities forum on Tuesday. Hilden, Hennepin Healthcare’s vice president of medical affairs, was referring to the nomenclature in use to designate emerging variants of concern.

One of the team members, U.S. Air Force Capt. Jenna Mason, a registered nurse with the 633d Medical Group out of Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, said that though she’s happy to be headed home for a while, she’s also sad to say goodbye to the hospital where she’s worked to save countless lives.

“Thirteen individuals are admitted right now for frostbite,” Hennepin Healthcare physician Dr. Thomas Masters says. When you combine alcohol and below zero temps, he says even something as simple as walking a few blocks without hats or gloves can be enough for frostbite to set in.

John Hick, Michele LeClaire and Heidi Erickson are emergency and critical care physicians at Hennepin County Medical Center.