“Less is More” in mechanical ventilation

Excerpt

Though formed in the late 1960s, the field of intensive care medicine solidified its place in the 1970s. Critical care practitioners were typically young and enthusiastic, but lacked the benefit of guidance from an established scientific literature or the experience of “older mentors,” as simply they did not exist. The rational basis of this new specialty was systems physiology and short-term observation, on which most of its monitoring and interventions are based. Interestingly, not only were the “intensivists” young, but so were the patients, compared to now. Very importantly, we naively assumed uniformity of diseases and disease mechanisms and translated our familiar deep knowledge of normal physiology to the pathologic state. …