Obituary: Dr Max Harry Weil

some would say its father-fi gure. Dr Max Harry Weil (Figure 1) played such a major role in the development of intensive care medicine as we know it today, making numerous contributions that have shaped the way in which we approach and manage critically ill patients. Born in Switzerland, Dr Weil reached the US when he was just 10. He obtained his MD degree in New York in 1952, a PhD degree from the University of Minnesota in 1957, and an honorary ScD degree from the State University of New York in 2004. He worked for several years as a cardiologist before deciding to devote his time to critical care medicine. As early as 1959 Dr Weil created the famous Shock Unit at the University of Southern California, and then in 1974 started an Institute of Critical Care Medicine. He moved to the University of Health Sciences in 1981 before returning to California in 2007 to create his own Institute – Th e Weil Institute of Critical Care Medicine in Rancho Mirage. His major contributions are well known to all intensivists, and include improved understanding of the pathophysiology of shock states, of the importance of blood lactate levels, and of the mechanisms of lung edema including the role of colloid osmotic pressure. Many of today’s management strategies and therapeutic approaches in critical care medicine are built on foundations put in place by Dr Weil, including the use of fl uids (he developed the famous fl uid challenge technique) and of vasoactive agents. In more recent years, his research focused on the microcirculation and on cardiopulmonary resuscitation, including monitoring techniques (for example, capnometry) and the role of various therapeutic agents. Not surprisingly, he was an important member of the Wolf Creek conferences on cardiopulmonary resuscitation. As a physiologist and a professor in clinical biomedical engineering, as well as a physician, Dr Weil managed to combine aspects of medicine, physiology, pharmacology, biochemistry and bio-engineering for the benefi t of the critically ill. As an innovator and inventor, he owned more than 20 patents for medical equipment and devices he developed to help monitor and treat critically ill patients. Dr Weil trained many hundreds of intensivists from the fi ve continents and remained a faithful mentor to many, if not all, of us. Under his skilled tutorship and guidance, we learned the importance of basing our approach on pathophysiological alterations at the bedside, focusing on the individual patient. He always preferred discerning studies in a small number of patients to large randomized, controlled trials of heterogeneous groups. Dr Weil was a founding member and the fi rst President of the Society of Critical Care Medicine. He was a Master Fellow of the College of Chest Physicians, a Master of the American College of Physicians, and a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, and the American Heart Association. He authored or co-authored more than 600 full peer-reviewed papers. He was actively involved in multiple committees and was a valued member of the editorial boards of many journals, including Critical Care. Dr Weil was widely respected and received awards from several International Societies and groups, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Federation of Societies of Intensive and Critical Care Medicine in 2009. © 2010 BioMed Central Ltd Obituary: Dr Max Harry Weil