Elmar Jenny
Reminiszenzen zur Entwicklung der Alpinund Bergrettungsmedizin Reminiscences regarding the development of alpine medicine and mountain rescue medicine S U M M A RY The present paper describes possible motives that may have caused physicians to study medical problems occurring specifically in mountainous regions. Those institutions will be specified that have engaged themselves in medical problems in mountains, and which ultimately – multiply networked – constituted the foundation of the development of an “alpine medicine”. Empirical observations and scientific methods enabled findings representing medical “terra incognita”: e.g. death after hanging in the rope; effects of hypothermia on the surface and interior of the human body and its consequences for the procedure after a fall into a glacier crevasse and after avalanche burial; optimal medical care of local freezing; death upon rescue and exhaustion in high altitude – often interpreted incorrectly; rotation trauma in helicopter rescue services; medical and sanitary-logistic peculiarities during expeditions in high or extreme altitudes. Eventually modern alpine rescue equipment according to the new medical findings and to the new rescue methods have been developed. Also the application of existing equipment has been modified accordingly. Examples are the Jenny-bag – used for helicopter-winch rescue and extreme terrestrial operations; the atmospherical-pressure adapted use of inflatable splints and vacuum mattresses and infusion practice. High-tech application in high altitude has defined the enormous advances of alpine rescue for the last decades, e.g. helicopter rescue operations in high altitude, electronic beepers’ application for rescue after avalanche burials and mobile radiotelephones/cellular phones. At the same time their application is connected with new risks. Eventually the alpine-medical literature – as far as available to the author – will be summarized from the beginnings in 1943 until the foundation of the Austrian Society for Alpine and High Altitude Medicine (ÖGAHM) in 1989. Also the national and international spreading of the newly developed alpine medicine will be reported.
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