The Early History of Critical Care Medicine In Southern Colorado

First Edition 2016

The early 1970s was an exciting time in medicine and especially critical care medicine in southern Colorado. My goal in this review is to cover the early development of critical care medicine during the early 1970s, and for a number of years after, while I was still active in the care of critically ill patients. I have no intention of covering the past few decades of critical care medicine in Pueblo, a time during which there has been much progress in that specialty and many new, well trained providers of care for the critically ill patients of southern Colorado.

Pueblo, the largest city in southern Colorado has been the medical center for that region, having two major, well equipped hospitals, with a total of over 800 beds, during the early 1970s. Parkview Hospital and St. Mary-Corwin Hospital served as a backup for medical and surgical care in southern Colorado, from Pueblo south to New Mexico, east to Kansas and west to Del Norte, Colorado. A large land area, it contained about 100,000 people in Pueblo and over 300,000 in southern Colorado.

Between the years 1970 and 1975, the largest concentration of medical and surgical specialists in southern Colorado was in Pueblo. However, it was believed that no new medical specialist had set up practice in that area during the prior 10 years, a time of great advances in critical care medicine and the beginnings of specialists who devoted their practices to critical care medicine. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, internists frequently received consultations on critically ill patients. At that time, without what we later thought of as specialized medical equipment, special X-ray and laboratory capabilities, medications, specialized nursing assistance and team medical concepts, though having all that was readily available to any physician, these physicians managed their critically ill patients as best they could with what they had and saved many lives.

27 photos and illustrations.

Contents

Chapter 1: Background

Chapter 2: Cardiovascular

Chapter 3: Respiratory

Chapter 4: Renal

Chapter 5: Toxicology

Chapter 6: Endocrine

Chapter 7: Neurosciences

Chapter 8: Gastroenterology

Chapter 9: Rheumatology

Chapter 10: Infectious Disease

Chapter 11: Academic Aspects of Critical Care Medicine

Chapter 12: Critical Care Medicine in Vietnam

Chapter 13: Surgery and Other Critical Care Providers

Chapter 14: Reflections