A 10-year-old boy hit in the face with a hockey puck thought his four stitches were a thrilling Olympic souvenir.
The little boy is one of thousands of people who've asked for some kind of medical help at one of the 35 venue medical clinics. Olympic health-care teams have seen more patients than they expected during the first half of the Winter Games.
Some 5,123 "patient encounters" have been logged at the venue clinics, with the Main Media Center leading the way. That clinic had 1,197, followed by the Polyclinic at Olympic Village with 924, according to Jess Gomez, an Intermountain Health Care spokesman. IHC is the medical provider for the Games.
Only about two dozen patients have had serious illness or injury that required they be hospitalized.
After Nagano's experience, organizers were expecting around 10,000 patient encounters. They're on course to exceed that. But also based on Nagano and other Olympic Games' experience, the tracking is significantly more thorough in order to make it easier for host cities and sponsors to plan.
That may also help shape the numbers, according to Ginny Borncamp, Salt Lake Organizing Committee director of medical services.
"We have a very effective documentation and communication system, both inside and externally," she said, adding that every contact with a patient is counted, whether that person pokes his head into a clinic to ask for a bandage or goes into cardiac arrest at a venue. And this Games, more than any before it, has focused on preventive care, like having a flu shot. People who got one of the flu shots donated to SLOC by Aventis were counted, too.
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