The Resuscitation Greats Virginia Apgar and the newborn Apgar Score

Fig. 1. It has been said that ‘‘every baby born is first seen through the eyes of Dr. Virginia Apgar’’ [1]. It is now almost 50 years since Virginia Apgar first described her new method for evaluation of the newborn infant at the joint meeting of the International Anesthesia Research Society and the International College of Anesthetists at Virginia Beach in September 1952. This work was published the following year in Current Researches in Anesthesia and Analgesia [2] (Fig. 1). She began her paper with the following observation on the resuscitation of infants at birth: ‘‘Seldom have there been such imaginative ideas, such enthusiasms, and dislikes, and such unscientific observations and study about one clinical picture......but the poor quality and lack of precise data of the majority of papers concerned with infant resuscitation are interesting.’’ She went on to review ‘‘the objective signs which pertained in any way to the condition of the