A history of intensive care medicine

Abstract

Most historians believe that Bjorn Ibsen's response to the 1952 polio epidemic in Copenhagen led to intensive care medicine (ICM) and intensive care units (ICUs). The epidemic involved thousands of patients, many dying from respiratory failure. Ibsen convinced his skeptical colleagues to concentrate all patients with respiratory failure in one area and institute tracheostomy and manual positive pressure ventilation in these patients. Attempts to understand the pathophysiology of respiratory failure and monitor its treatment accelerated the development of blood gas analysis by Poul Astrup.