In at the start: recollections of the early days of critical care in Toronto

Excerpt

Visualize a time when the only patients in a hospital receiving positive pressure ventilation were in operating rooms, where ventilation was delivered by the hand of the anesthesiologist using a bag that was part of the then rudimentary anesthesia equipment, and the only monitors were blood pressure cuffs. There were no mechanical ventilators and no piped gases in most hospitals. The field of respiratory therapy did not exist, and oxygen tanks were only delivered to the wards by an orderly on request. There were no oscilloscopes to display an electrocardiograph (EKG) tracing or other variables in the operating room, let alone at the bedside. Plastics had yet to invade medicine, and there were no disposable items. Closed chest cardiac massage had yet to be described. This was the situation at Toronto General Hospital (TGH) when I joined the anesthesia staff in 1955, but it was likely similar in most hospitals around the world at that time. …