![]() “Critical care medicine is something that really came to the forefront of people's attention in COVID-19, but it's always there in the background,” Wunsch says. Wunsch wrote the book “ The Autumn Ghost: How the Battle Against a Polio Epidemic Revolutionized Modern Medical Care” detailing the creation of the ventilator and other aspects of critical care. And critical care, like that provided to polio patients, has become a focal point of medicine amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Ventilator technology has been expanded since, but it remains similar to this day. “For short periods of time, they would blow air into the lungs to keep someone breathing.” “ was used in the operating room by anesthesiologists when they gave someone anesthesia and paralyzed them for surgery,” Wunsch says. The mortality rate of the disease reduced from 90% to 20%. And, the technology was much smaller and less invasive than the iron lung. The technology would effectively push air into the lungs. Bjørn Aage Ibsen started working to create a positive pressure ventilator in 1953. Additionally, for patients with bulbar polio, the mortality rate still hovered around 90% even when using the iron lung. ![]() Plus, doctors and nurses had trouble treating patients because they had to stay encapsulated in the machine to create negative pressure that would suck air into the lungs. Patients often felt trapped in a huge metal casket, a major downside to the iron lung. Though revolutionary, it still had a host of setbacks. “In fact, it was the first time you had a machine that could support people's breathing.” ![]() “The iron lung, which came in in 1928, was really revolutionary,” says critical care physician Dr. The poliovirus often left patients paralyzed and with trouble breathing, and the only option for treatment was the iron lung, which sucked air into the lungs. At the start, most patients didn’t make it home from the hospital. When polio first broke out in the early 1900s, modern medicine couldn’t keep up. Facebook Email An iron lung at Boston Children’s Hospital.
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