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The Intensive Care Unit: The Unfolding and Ambiguities of Survival Therapy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2009

Stanley Joel Reiser
Stanley Joel Reiser
Affiliation:
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
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Abstract

The intensive care unit (ICU), one of the great achievements of modern medicine, is both a set of technologies and a space with a special function. This essay traces the evolution of the ICU's crucial technologies, and how the space bearing this name was carved out in the hospital. Ethical, legal, and social developments, an important part of this story, are incorporated in it.

Type
Special Section: Intensive Care: Where Are We?
Information
International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , Summer 1992 , pp. 382 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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