Date: 27 Aug 2012; Recommended by Dr Peter Au-Yeung MRCP FRCA MA in Health Care Ethics and Law
To the COS(ICU) and Cons(ICU) of HA hospitals
60 years ago today, Dr Bjorn Aage Ibsen used a new technique (tracheosotomy, IPPV + sedation) to save the life of a 12 yr old girl with bulbar paralysis and respiratory failure in the polio epidemic in Copenhagen. The new method was then rolled out to similar patients in the Blegdems Hospital within weeks, and they opened three 35-bed wards for this purpose. Ibsen recruited up to 250 medical students to manually ventilate the patients in shifts and the hospital employed another 250 nurses. The next year, Ibsen opened the first intensive care ward in the Municipal Hospital in Copenhagen.
But that first patient Ibsen saved was to remain ventilator dependant until she died some 19 years later, giving a foretaste of the possibilities, pitfalls as well as the ethical dilemmas of what this high technology specialty would offer in the coming years.
For a reflection on the ethical issues of intensive care, you may care to read this Chinese bioethics blog entry: http://catholic-bioethics.blogspot.hk/2012/08/blog-post_26.html.
Best regards
Dr Peter Au-Yeung MRCP FRCA MA in Health Care Ethics and Law