Anaesthesia and intensive care
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Anaesth Intensive Care · Jul 2016
Historical ArticleAdvances in the diagnosis of shock, its assessment and resuscitation during the Great War.
The Great War of 1914-1918 ushered in a new era of technology on the battlefield resulting in casualties on an unprecedented scale. There had been progress in many related areas of medicine before the outbreak of hostilities but these had not been applied or fully developed in clinical practice. This is particularly true for the management of haemorrhagic shock and resuscitation. This article discusses the history and development of medical treatment of shock and trauma patients during the conflict.
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Anaesth Intensive Care · Jul 2016
Historical ArticleAnaesthesia on the Western Front-perspectives a century later.
This year, 2016, marks the centenary of some of the worst battles of World War I. It is timely to reflect on the experiences of those who lived through those events, and the significant effects on the development of anaesthesia that occurred as a result. ⋯ The challenges of the Western Front, with its massive numbers of injured, saw progress in the understanding and management of trauma and shock, and significant improvement in the provision of anaesthesia and the training of anaesthesia providers. The result was increased anaesthetic safety for the civilian population after the war and further development of anaesthesia and resuscitation as a specialised area of medicine.
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Anaesth Intensive Care · Jul 2016
Biography Historical ArticleThe introduction of expired air resuscitation into Surf Life Saving Australia.
Surf Life Saving Australia, which began in the early 1900s, initially adopted the indirect resuscitation methods used by the Royal Life Saving Society. As new indirect methods became available, both organisations adapted their resuscitation techniques and followed international developments closely. In the 1950s, accumulating evidence suggested that direct methods of resuscitation, such as mouth-to-mouth ventilation, might be more efficacious. ⋯ Following the convention, Queensland Surf Life Saving conducted training sessions in cooperation with anaesthetists Roger Bennett and Tess Brophy (later Cramond), at St Andrew's Hospital in Brisbane. Two volunteers were anaesthetised and paralysed on two separate weekends to allow over one hundred people to gain experience in expired-air and bag-mask ventilation. One of the volunteers in these training exercises kindly provided much of the material that led to this paper, providing a first hand account of the experiments and an invaluable insight into the cooperation between anaesthetists and volunteer rescue associations.