Creator of the Apgar Score, Dr. Virginia Apgar on Google Doodle
Virginia Apgar’s test has saved millions of babies.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Dr. Virginia Apgar noticed something odd. Despite the US infant mortality rate decreasing overall, a high number of infants were still dying within 24 hours of birth.
The Apgar test examines:
Appearance (is the newborn a healthy color or blueish?)
Pulse (is it above or below 100 beats per minute, or undetectable?)
Grimace (what response does the baby make when reflexes are stimulated?)
Activity (how much are legs and arms moving?)
Respiration (how strong is the baby’s breathing?)
Each of these categories in Dr. Apgar’s test earns the baby between zero and two points, depending on the health of the response. The theoretical maximum is 10, but this is rare. An Apgar Score between 4 and 6 may mean some medical intervention is needed. An Apgar Score below four may mean resuscitation is needed. The Apgar test is conducted a minute after birth, and again four minutes later, in order to judge the effectiveness of intervention.
Dr. Apgar developed the test after noticing that, even though the general U.S. infant mortality rate fell between the 1930s and 1950s, it remained constant for babies within the first day of life.
Apart from developing her famous scoring exercise, Dr. Apgar was a notable advocate for universal vaccination in order to combat the rubella epidemic of the mid-Sixties. In her later years, she worked for March of Dimes, a non-profit founded by President Franklin Roosevelt that initially targeted polio but went on to focus on the prevention of birth defects.
Even before she developed the Apgar Score, Dr. Apgar had already become the first female full professor at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She received a master’s degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University in 1959, and was a director at the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which is know known as the March of Dimes.
She died at the age of 65 from liver cirrhosis, and in 1995 was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.