VMA on the condition of the persons rescued from the nursing home in Barajevo

According to Dr Nataša Perković Vukčević, head of the Intensive Care Department of the Toxicology Clinic of the Medical Academy of Medical Sciences, during yesterday's duty, actually at the end of the night shift, they received four patients with gas poisoning in the fire, predominantly with the effects of carbon monoxide and cyanide.

"Two patients are in severe poisoning and in a serious general condition. One patient had to undergo hyperbaric oxygen therapy. He is in a slightly better general condition, hemodynamically stable. The other patient is on a ventilator. Her condition is still critical and serious. The remaining two patients are elderly patients with numerous associated diseases. They are undergoing non-specific detoxification therapy and are currently hemodynamically stable," said Dr Perković Vukčević for TV "Prva".

As the doctor explained, when a fire occurs and thermal decomposition of such substances occurs, there are over 400 toxic substances in the smoke.

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"We cannot precisely identify them, we can classify them into some that are irritants, that produce local effects related to our respiratory organs, but, unfortunately, there are also those substances, that is, compounds that produce systemic toxicity, which is much more dangerous. The word is primarily about carbon monoxide, and then also about cyanides. Through indirect and direct measurements, some analyzes that we can carry out, in two patients we actually found very high concentrations of carboxyhemoglobin, which is a marker of severe carbon monoxide poisoning," she added.

These are elderly people who could not be evacuated on their own, so doctors assume that their exposure to smoke was not short.

"It is difficult to talk about the time of exposure. Emergency crews were quickly on the scene, they received our advice after a telephone consultation to immediately administer high-flow oxygen, which is very important, and somewhat probably helped to keep those values ​​by the time they arrived with us, they are a little lower. I assume that initially they were much higher, based on the clinical signs we detected when we admitted the patients," concluded Dr Nataša Perković Vukčević.