Virginia apgar cause of death

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Virginia apgar family
Virginia apgar education

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Virginia Apgar, M.D., the first woman to become a full professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, designed the first standardized method for evaluating the newborn's transition to life outside the womb—the Apgar Score. Newborn babies still benefit from Dr. Virginia Apgar's groundbreaking research into the effects of anesthesia during childbirth and advocacy on the prevention of birth defects.

By the time she graduated from high school,Virginia Apgar was determined to be a doctor. She may have been inspired by her father's scientific hobbies, or by her eldest brother's early death from tuberculosis, and another brother's chronic childhood illness. With the help of several scholarships, she attended Mt. Holyoke College, performing in the college orchestra as a gifted violinist and cellist and graduating with a major in zoology in 1929.

Apgar entered the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University just before the Wall Street crash of October 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression. Despite financial problems, she graduated fourth i

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In some ways, Virginia Apgar helped babies born in modern hospitals all over the world. In 1952, she developed the 10-point Apgar score to assist physicians and nurses in assessing the status of newborns. Given at one minute and five minutes after birth, the Apgar test measures a child's breathing, skin color, reflexes, motion and heart rate. A low score can signal the need for immediate attention.

Trained as a surgeon and anesthesiologist, Dr. Apgar eventually focused on the effects of anesthesia on newborns. She raised funds for research into birth defects, their prevention and treatment. A friend said, "She probably did more than any other physician to bring the problem of birth defects out of back rooms."

The culmination of her work was the development of the specialty of perinatology. She died in 1974 at 65.

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Born in New Jersey, United States, on 7 June 1909, Virginia Apgar was set on becoming a physician ever since she was in high school. She was inspired by her father’s hobby in scientific projects such as building telescopes, and by an older brother who was afflicted with and subsequently died of tuberculosis. Apgar attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and graduated in 1929 with a degree in zoology. During college, she had to take on odd jobs to support herself, including rounding up stray cats for a research laboratory and playing the cello and violin in the college orchestra.

A NEW FIELD

Apgar began medical school in 1929, right before the Great Depression, at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, New York, and graduated with honours, placing fourth in her class. From 1933 to 1936, she was a surgical intern and resident at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, New York, under the famous Dr Allen Whipple, who dissuaded her from continuing in a specialty that was historically known to be tough on women physicians. Instead, he suggested that she ent