Rainer's Spin on PICS
The History of Post Intensive Care Syndrome
ewe
sea
eye
post
Amazing advances in medical care have taken place over a very short period of history. In the past one hundred years, when compared to the thousands of preceding years of "man & medicine" preceding, th we can clearly see how PICS came to be. An incredible uptick in people surviving injuries and illnesses that not long ago were sure to be fatal, combined with the innovation of "special wards" for critically ill patients over the past 70 years, has resulted in tens of millions of patients spending time in intensive care units in hospitals around the world.
​
Medical miracles, life-saving surgeries, and one devastating albeit unanticipated compromise - Post Intensive Care Syndrome.
.
HISTORICAL TIMELINE
1952, the concept of a "special ward" for critically ill patients begins to take form.
Eureka! By George, I think we've got it!
In 1952, Dr. Bjorn Ibsen, struck gold. He placed patients in a "special ward," with equipment and specialists at the ready to attend to severe respiratory conditions, lives were saved that would have been lost, if the patients remained in the hosptial's general wards.
​
"All patients with respiratory problems were collected in a special department, where they were under constant observation by a team, consisting of the epidemiologist, the ear, nose and throat surgeon, and the anxsthetist, all working with help from an excellent and capable laboratory. Later on radiologists and physiotherapists also helped...