Intensive Care and Ventilation
In Copenhagen's 1952 polio epidemic, anaesthetist Bjørn Ibsen kept patients alive with hand-pumped air through a windpipe tube, which led to the first intensive care unit in 1953.
Open in the interactive tree →About 3,000 polio patients were admitted to Copenhagen's Blegdam Hospital between August and December 1952, 345 of them with polio affecting breathing and swallowing muscles, and the hospital had one tank respirator and six cuirass respirators. From 27 August 1952 Ibsen had patients breathe through a tube in the windpipe, squeezing a rubber bag by hand in shifts around the clock; about 1,500 medical and dental students took part. Deaths among patients with paralysed breathing, about 87 percent before, fell to about 36 percent by November. In 1953 Ibsen set up what is often called the world's first intensive care unit at the city's municipal hospital, and mechanical ventilators soon replaced the students.
Prerequisites
- Anesthesia1846Anaesthetists' skills with airway tubes and hand-bag breathing were turned on polio patients.
Unlocks
- COVID-19 Pandemic2020Ventilators and intensive-care beds were the limiting resource in COVID-19 waves.