One Clinicians Lifetime of Bringing Technology into Medicine and its Impact upon Critical Care Patients

Abstract

As a United States Army Air Corps Pilot during World War II, flying all types of military aircraft, the critical dependence upon supplemental breathing oxygen during high altitude flight became of paramount importance in terms of survival. I was to learn, in the ensuing years, that there were many parallels in altitude-provoked hypoxia and the typical hypoxia associated with certain cardiopulmonary diseases. With a primary mechanical background leading to the role of a self styled biomedical technologist, I have been a most active student of pathophysiology and the associated basic sciences for well over fifty years. During these years, by osmosis alone, if not by design; I have compounded my basic intelligence with considerable knowledge relative to the interrelationships involved, during the mechanical ventilation of the lung.