The history of pediatric anesthesia

Abstract

The beginnings of pediatric anesthesiology go back to the middle of the 19th century and it is associated with a rural physician Crawford W. Long, MD, who in the 1842 recorded the first case of giving diethyl ether anesthesia to an eight-year-old boy. The start of development of contemporary pediatric anesthesia is considered to be in 1930, which marked two periods of progress. In the first period, anesthesia techniques and accessories adjusted to different children’s ages were developed. In the second period, modern anesthetic medications and supervision were introduced into everyday clinical practice in order to better protect vital organs and their functions in the child’s body. The first multidisciplinary pediatric intensive care unit at the Children’s Hospital of Gothenburg in Sweden was established in 1955. Dr. Branka Mitrović is considered to be the founder of pediatric anesthesiology in Serbia, as she founded the Department of Anesthesiology and Reanimation at the University Children’s hospital in 1955. The history of pediatric regional anesthesia began after its introduction in adults, which occurred after the invention of cocaine in 1884. The Ministry of Health of the Republic of Serbia approved a specialization in pediatric anesthesiology in 2018. The development of pediatric anesthesia is fascinating because it completely followed the development of pediatric surgery. Modern pediatric anesthesiology is entirely prepared to meet the needs of the most complex surgical interventions, as well as the treatment of critically ill children, and significantly contributes to better treatment outcomes of pediatric surgical patients.

Keywords

• children
• pediatric anesthesia
• history
• development