(Dr. Virginia Apgar)
born on June 7, 1909 in Westfield, New Jersey/ United States
died on August 7, 1974 in New York City, NY/ United States
US-American surgeon, anesthesiologist, perinatologist, teratologist, instrument maker, baseball fan, pilot
115th birthday on June 7, 2024
50th anniversary of death on August 7, 2024
Biography
Did you know that all babies born in a modern clinic are examined in the first minute for activity (muscle tone), pulse (heart rate), grimace (reflex irritability), appearance (skin color) and respiration to arrive at the so-called APGAR score and that Apgar is not merely a mnemonic aid, but that it is actually a backronym for Apgar, the woman who created this standard assessment scheme for newborns in 1953. The five criteria ensure that the health of a newborn can be assessed quickly, and the score reveals any need for rapid intervention, points to further examinations necessary and allows for the comparison of different therapies.
Virginia Apgar always wanted to be a doctor. After graduating with an undergraduate degree in zoology, she obtained her medical degree at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. She completed a residency in her desired specialty of surgery at Presbyterian Hospital, and performed over a hundred operations in the years 1933-35, but she was then forced to switch careers. (However, this was not because she realized that “women don't want to be operated on by a female surgeon. God only knows why.”) She had debts of $4000, and during the Depression the economic prospects for female surgeons were even worse than those for male surgeons. In contrast, anesthesia—traditionally the domain of nurses—was gaining in importance as surgery developed. Anesthetic research and teaching needed to be advanced. Apgar therefore took an anesthesia course for nurses at Presbyterian Hospital in 1936, and then went to two other universities for six months at a time. In 1938 she was the first to head the Division of Anesthesia created within the Department of Surgery at Columbia. In the following years she gained further experience in medical anesthesia. In 1949 she was finally appointed as full professor, the first full professorship in what had become the independent Department of Anesthesia at Columbia.
The infant mortality rate in the United States had fallen sharply in recent decades, but hardly at all among newborns. Apgar put her experience in obstetrics to good use, focusing on the baby as well instead of primarily on the mother. She developed new examination methods (e.g. the umbilical artery blood gas analysis) and discovered a correlation between the Apgar score and the (harmful) effects of (general) anesthesia on the baby.
From 1959 until her death in 1974 she also devoted herself to generating public support and funding for research into birth defects. She became the first female professor of teratology and a lecturer in medical genetics. She published extensively, raised funds, and traveled widely on lecture tours - usually with the viola she had made herself so she could occasionally make a little music with local musicians.
(Text from 2008; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2024)
Please consult the German version for additional information (pictures, sources, videos, bibliography).
Quotes
“Virginia Apgar was one of the world's most distinguished, most respected and most beloved women in medicine. A person of great moral courage, she brought to her profession a warm heart, boundless energy generously expended for others and an inquisitive mind eager to embrace new ideas.”
(Christianna Smith in a eulogy 1974, found here)
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