Hemodynamic and Metabolic Therapy in Critically Ill Patients

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The poliomyelitis epidemic of 1952 in Denmark was a key impetus for the development of modern critical care medicine. Mortality among patients with respiratory failure was dramatically reduced by applying techniques normally used in operating rooms and by placing these patients in a designated area of the hospital, where their condition could be constantly monitored by members of the medical staff. The benefits derived from normalizing abnormal physiological functions in these patients represented a clinical vindication of the 19th-century theories of Claude Bernard, who proposed that systems respond to pathogens by maintaining cellular homeostasis. Much of modern critical care practice . . .