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The birth of intensive care medicine: Björn Ibsen’s records

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Abstract

The birth of intensive care medicine was a process that took place in Copenhagen, Denmark, during and after the poliomyelitis epidemic in 1952/1953. The events that led to the creation of the first intensive care unit in the world in December 1953 are well described. It is generally agreed upon that the start of the process was the fact that an anaesthesiologist (Björn Ibsen) was brought out of the operating theatre and asked to use his skills on a 12-year-old girl suffering from polio. The medical record of the girl contains a minute-by-minute description of the historical event. A translation of this part of the record is published as an Online Resource to the article. The role played by the epidemiologist Mogens Björneboe is further analysed. He was the catalyst of the process, being the one with the idea that the skills of an anaesthesiologist could be used for other purposes than surgery. When first Ibsen realised what could be done with his skills, he proved to be one of the most progressive and inventive doctors seen in modern medicine. An interview with Prof. Ibsen in 2006 is published as an Online Resource to the article.

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Fig. 1

Notes

  1. In the interview from 2006, Ibsen notes that the child was given narcosis and curare, and was tracheotomised and ventilated. In his recording of the event from 1975 [6], he notes that the child was treated with d-tubo-curare and ventilated on a rocking bed, but there is no mention of sedatives.

  2. In the 1940s, a physician named Clemmesen developed a method to treat patients with barbiturate poisoning which involved artificial positive pressure ventilation through tracheotomy for respiratory failure as well as treatment of shock. In 1949, he opened a centralised unit at Bispebjerg Hospital in Copenhagen [18].

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Prof. Dr.med. Dr. phil. U. Benzenhöfer for his untiring guidance and support.

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Correspondence to Louise Reisner-Sénélar.

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Reisner-Sénélar, L. The birth of intensive care medicine: Björn Ibsen’s records. Intensive Care Med 37, 1084–1086 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00134-011-2235-z

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