About an epidemic, ventilators and intensive care. A Déjà vu?

Abstract

The birth of intensive care was a process that took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, during and after the polio epidemic of 1952-1953. The fact that marks its beginning was that anesthesiologist Björn Ibsen was asked to help and “came out of the operating room”, not without some controversy. Ibsen proposed and advocated the use of tracheostomy, suctioning and ventilation. Given the lack of positive pressure ventilators, this task was carried out by students who contributed 165,000 hours of manual ventilation. Few years later, in Gothenburg, Sweden, the anesthesiologist Göran Haglund, motivated by the case of a four years old boy with complicated appendicitis, created the first multidisciplinary pediatric intensive care unit in the world (1955). In Chile, during the 1950s, the concept of pediatric intensive care began to develop under the direction of physicians with a solid vision of the future. Given that the planet is experiencing a pandemic, it seems an appropriate moment to review the role of the polio epidemic in the development of positive pressure ventilation, the birth of intensive care medicine and intensive care units, in order to assess the role of the various tasks and innovations carried out.