Intensive Care Unit of the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, Istanbul School of Medicine

The intensive care unit at Istanbul School of Medicine was established in 1970 by Prof. Dr. Cemalettin Öner who was one of the first anesthesiologists in Turkey. Cemalettin Öner was sent to Paris for advanced education in 1954 after he had become an anesthesiologist and during his stay he worked in a newly established intensive care unit at the Foch Hospital. When he came back to Turkey he started to work on de­ve­loping an intensive care program at the Haydarpaşa Numune Hospital. In 1959, he established the first multidisciplinary intensive care unit of Turkey in this Haydarpaşa Numune Hospital. After becoming professor in Istanbul School of Medicine in 1970 he continued his work there and started to organize an intensive care unit at this fa­culty. At the beginning a unit which was called “recovery room” was established, and then in 1974 a new intensive care unit was developed with 8 beds, each bed had an artificial ventilator (“Bird” brand) and a monitor system in a new building which had direct connections with the surgical departments.

In 1988 the intensive care unit has moved to a new facility where it comprises 3 separate units with a total of 24 beds in a newly constructed surgical building where it can be reached easily from surgery and radiology departments. Nowadays, in addition to this multidisciplinary intensive care unit, new facilities for critical care have been opened within our faculty; in the trauma and emergency surgery department (10 beds), in the neurosurgery department (8 beds) and in the orthopedic surgery department (6 beds). In 2005 an Intensive Care Division connected to the Department of Anesthesiology was founded and after that all intensive care units in our faculty have worked under the name of this new Intensive Care Division.