Tens of thousands of people owe their lives to intensive care. In the UK, for example, three quarters of people who enter an ICU will survive. But it’s important to also consider what happens when people are discharged.
“People who’ve been in critical care need ongoing support after that critical care stay and that's an important aspect,” says Bryden. “It's not just about survival, it's about the quality of the survival.”
And ICUs are facing other challenges. Cushing was the first to introduce technology such as blood pressure monitoring and, today, technology is at the heart of modern ICUs. But as patients have become surrounded with more and more machines, such as ventilators, heart monitors and sensors for vital signs such as temperature and blood oxygen, there have been new complications.
“The vast numbers of probes and machines are now giving the doctors lots of data but it's all scattered and they have to put it together in their head,” says Spencer. “What's coming next is using machine learning to develop algorithms so that you take all that disparate information and put it together to mean something – that's the future of intensive care units.”
What started with an obsessive and difficult surgeon and the rapid response to a pandemic, has changed the face of medicine. “The impact of what they created can’t be quantified,” says Kelly. “We owe these pioneers everything.”
Richard Hollingham is a science and space journalist, feature writer for BBC Future and the author of Blood and Guts, A History of Surgery.
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