tracheostomy
Books
- Breathing by Hand The Copenhagen Polio Epidemic and the Birth of Intensive Care · Liszt Think
In August 1952, Copenhagen’s Blegdam Hospital faced catastrophe as fifty paralyzed polio patients arrived daily with only one iron lung available.
- The First Paralysed Breath…tion took place in the ward itself, standing beside a machine that had just been cleaned and prepared for its next occupant. Ibsen spoke of tracheostomy, of cutting an opening in the neck to bypass the obstructed upper airway, of delivering air directly to the trachea under positive pressure…
- A Theory of Poisoned Air…f metabolic acidosis destroying organs while the machine maintains its indifferent rhythm. Ibsen proposes intervention. He wants to perform tracheostomy—surgical opening of the airway below the larynx—and connect her to positive-pressure ventilation. The proposal is radical. Tracheostomy in…
- The Machine and the Man…The cuirass respirator cannot serve both. The iron lung is occupied. It has been occupied for three days by a teenager whose family refuses tracheostomy, who clings to the cylindrical steel chamber as the only familiar shape in a world of sudden helplessness. The five remaining cuirass units…