Monday, November 20, 2017

New Breath of Life

"Women are liberated from the time they leave the womb."


            Dr. Virginia Apgar never held her breath when it came time to start something new. She began taking flying lessons when she was in her 50s. She often joked that her goal was to one day fly under the George Washington Bridge that spanned the Hudson River in New York City. She was no under achiever. During her long career, she flew higher than most physicians.
            Her interest in medicine began because, as a child, her brother was chronically ill, and she took a loving interest in his condition. She could have done most anything in life. In school she was irrepressible, playing seven sports, acting in stage plays, working on the school newspaper, and playing violin in the orchestra. She did do poorly in one subject—home economics. Friends said she never learned how to cook.
            There were few female doctors when she started medical school in 1929 at New York's Columbia College of Physicians. By the time she graduated (fourth in her class), she had amassed debts totaling $4,000, an astounding amount at the time. She wanted to become a surgeon. Opportunities were few in that specialty, and with pressing economic needs, she turned to anesthesia, a field more open to women.

“Stag Dinner—MAD!”

            But that was a struggle, too. At the time, nurses often performed anesthesia, and surgeons looked down on doctors who were anesthesiologists. Professional dinners were held at men's clubs which forbid entry to women. In her diary, Dr. Apgar once wrote, "Good meeting. Stag dinner—MAD!"
            Anesthesiology continued to be a neglected area of medicine for years, but Dr. Apgar worked tirelessly, becoming her alma mater's first female professor in 1949. Her research focused on anesthesia during childbirth. Though medical care had improved greatly since the early 1900s, infant mortality rates remained high—especially during the first 24 hours of life. In those days, many newborns were not routinely given immediate medical attention.
            Apgar realized that a key to saving the lives of more babies was examining them closely and immediately after birth to see if they were breathing well and getting enough oxygen. At the time, various doctors used competing systems to determine whether or not a newborn was in distress.

“You’d Do It Like This.”

            Legend has it that one day in 1949 a medical student commented to her about the need to better evaluate newborns. Taking a piece of paper, Dr. Apgar said, "That's easy. You'd do it like this" and wrote down the vital signs that should be observed.


            Word spread, but it wasn't until 1952 that her name actually became a word. That's when a Denver physician wrote her to let her know one of his residents had invented a clever way to remember her five scoring criteria: APGAR—Appearance (color); Pulse (heart rate); Grimace (reflex irritability); Activity (muscle tone); and Respiration
            She was most amused to be honored by this eponym. (That's the technical term for an acronym named after a person.) In short order, doctors around the nation adopted the APGAR Score. Today all newborns are evaluated and rated using these criteria one minute and five minutes after birth. "Every baby born in a modern hospital anywhere in the world is looked at through the eyes of Dr. Virginia Apgar," says the National Library of Medicine's website.

            Dr. Apgar lived to bring the breath of life to millions. She made a point of this in her work as a clinical instructor. Because resuscitation is an essential aspect of anesthesiology, she demanded that her students be ready to resuscitate anyone at any time anywhere. That's why she always carried with her a laryngoscope (for viewing the throat), an endotracheal tube, and a pocket knife for performing emergency tracheotomies (to open the windpipe). She told her students to be similarly prepared.


MORAL: Stay awake on the job.

Buy the book "Courage 101: True Tales of Grit & Glory" at Amazon!

No comments:

Post a Comment

I'm thrilled to announce that I will be a guest on the WSMN-AM morning show talking about my new book " Courage 101: True Tales...