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The outbreak that invented intensive care

A heroic community effort at a daring hospital saved lives, led to today’s ventilators and revolutionized medicine — it holds lessons for our times.
  1. Hannah Wunsch

    1. Hannah Wunsch is an expert in the comparative epidemiology of intensive care. She is a professor of anaesthesia and intensive-care medicine at the University of Toronto in Canada, and a Canada research chair in critical-care organization and outcomes. She is writing a book about the Copenhagen polio epidemic and the birth of intensive care. She is a practising intensive-care physician at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto

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The number of hospital admissions was more than the staff had ever seen. And people kept coming. Dozens each day. They were dying of respiratory failure. Doctors and nurses stood by, unable to help without sufficient equipment.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01019-y

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 07 April 2020: An earlier version of this world view erroneously stated that pilots experience increased air pressure at high altitudes.

  • Correction 29 June 2020: An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that Bjørn Ibsen day is 26 August.

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