Critical Care Pharmacotherapy (by Brian Erstad)

Critical Care Pharmacotherapy (by Brian Erstad)

The origin of critical care as a specialty is open to debate. Critically ill
patients have received care in groups near battlefields ever since
organized large-scale fighting first occurred. In hospital
settings,isolated postoperative units dedicated to critically ill patients
have been reported since the early 1900s.However, the widespread
need for mechanical ventilation (commonly called respirators at the
time) of patients with polio during the epidemics of the 1940s and
1950s led to a tipping point in the formation of critical care
specialization. One of the first papers describing the care of patients
with polio referred to care “by a team” of clinicians, although
pharmacists were not among the health professionals listed.1 In
addition to ventilators, other technologies that began to have more
widespread use in critically ill patients by the 1950s included
rudimentary dialysis machines,AC electrical defibrillators, and
transvenous cardiac pacing equipment