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A little bit of history on CPAP - Podd - 03-20-2017
Hi everybody,
I've been digging around in history about CPAP, i.e. when it was first used and found a few 'Nuggets' of information I thought I would share.
Back in the 1950 Sleep studies were sort of a curiosity, pen and paper graphs were the norm, although limited by resources, some foundations to later studies were laid.
We then jump forward thirty years and continents to Dr Colin Sullivan in Australia, the year is 1980, Dr Sullivan had been researching Positive Air pressure treatments on Dogs and the 'perfect' patient for an experiment appeared.
The patient had previously refused a tracheostomy, something that was all too common to do at the time and for many years after.
Using Pipes and a sealant, the experiment was a complete success, although Dr Sullivan had a sleepless night, his patient had the best nights sleep in years.
The general feeling at the time was this 'Treatment' was merely a 'Stop Gap' prior to surgery, fortunately for most of us they got that wrong.
Over time Masks and Machines have improved, fortunately we no longer need a Sleep Tech adjusting Pressures during the night!
At a recent Resmed Seminar, there were several patients that had 'Surgery' and one of them challenged speaker, himself a Professor in Sleep Medicine whether this form of treatment would still be used today, the answer was 'Absolutely Not!', the speaker then went on to say as an aside, "There's a saying amongst Surgeons that ENT Surgeons remove their mistakes", that didn't go down too well.
Please feel free to add 'Milestones' that you think are important.
Podd