The Apgar Score (1953-1958)

In 1952 Virginia Apgar, a physician at the Sloane Women?s Hospital in New York City, New York, created the Apgar score as a method of evaluating newborn infants? health to determine if they required medical intervention. The score included five separate categories, including heart rate, breathing rate, reaction to stimuli, muscle activity, and color. An infant received a score from zero to two in each category, and those scores added up to the infant?s total score out of ten. An infant with a score of ten was healthy, and those with low scores required medical attention at birth. Apgar originally used the score to determine how infants responded to the pain-relieving drugs given to pregnant women during labor. The Apgar score also served to determine when the infant required medical assistance, especially oxygen resuscitation. As of 2017, nearly every hospital in the world uses an updated Apgar score to evaluate the health of newborn infants. The Apgar score has allowed for medical personnel to evaluate an infant directly after birth on an objective scale to determine whether that infant could benefit from possibly life-saving medical intervention.