Bjørn Aage Ibsen (August 30, 1915 – August 7, 2007) was a
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
anesthetist and founder of
intensive-care medicine. He graduated in 1940 from medical school at the
University of Copenhagen and trained in
anesthesiology from 1949 to 1950 at the
Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General or MGH) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School located in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. It is the third oldest general hospital in the United Stat ...
,
Boston. He became involved in the 1952
poliomyelitis
Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 70% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe sym ...
outbreak in Denmark, where 2722 patients developed the illness in a 6-month period with 316 suffering respiratory or
airway paralysis. Treatment had involved the use of the few
negative pressure ventilators available, but these devices, while helpful, were limited and did not protect against aspiration of secretions. After detecting high levels of
CO2 in blood samples and inside a little boy's lung, Ibsen changed management directly. He instituted protracted positive pressure ventilation by means of
intubation into the trachea, and enlisting 200 medical students to
manually pump oxygen and air into the patients lungs. In this fashion, mortality declined from 90% to around 25%. Patients were managed in three special 35 bed areas, which aided charting and other management.
In 1953, Ibsen set up the world's first medical/surgical ICU in a converted student nurse classroom in Kommunehospitalet (The Municipal Hospital) in
Copenhagen, and provided one of the first accounts of the management of
tetanus with muscle relaxants and controlled ventilation. In 1954 Ibsen was elected head of the department of anaesthesiology at that institution. He jointly authored the first known account of ICU management principles in Nordisk Medicin, September 18, 1958: ‘Arbejdet på en Anæsthesiologisk Observationsafdeling’ (‘The Work in an Anaesthesiologic Observation Unit’) with Tone Dahl Kvittingen from Norway.
References
External links
Medical Museion University of CopenhagenLouise Reisner-Sénélar (2009), The Danish anaesthesiologist Björn Ibsen a pioneer of long-term ventilation on the upper airwaysDer dänische Anästhesist Björn Ibsen – ein Pionier der Langzeitbeatmung über die oberen Luftwege, Louise Reisner-Sénélar, 2009
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ibsen, Bjorn Aage
Danish intensivists
2007 deaths
1915 births
Danish anesthesiologists
Danish medical researchers
University of Copenhagen
20th-century Danish physicians