Philip Sunshine, 94, dies; Doctor who pioneered in the treatment of premature babies

Philip Sunshine, a doctor from Stanford University who played an important role in setting up neonatology as a medical specialty, who brought about a revolution in the care of premature and critically sick newborns who previously had little opportunity to survive, died on 5 April in his house in Cupertino, Cupertino. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Diana Sunshine.

Before Dr. Sunshine and a handful of other doctors were interested in the care of Premies in the late 1950s and early 1960s, more than half of these unimaginably fragile patients died shortly after birth. Insurance companies would not pay to treat them.

Dr. Sunshine, a pediatric gastroenterologist, thought that many premature babies could be saved. In Stanford he insisted on teams of doctors from several disciplines to treat them in special Intensive Care units. Together with his colleagues, he pioneered with methods for feeding premies with formula and helping their breathing with fans.

“We could keep babies alive who would not have survived,” said Dr. Sunshine in 2000 in an oral history interview With the pediatric history center of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “And now everyone just takes this for granted.”

The early sixties were a turning point in the care for premature babies.

According to Oxford English Dictionary, the word neonatology was first used in the book ‘Diseases of Newborn’ from 1960 by Alexander J. Schaffer, a pediatrician in Baltimore. By that time, the Neonatology department of Stanford – one of the first in the country – was active.

In 1963 the second son of President John F. Kennedy, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, was born premature for almost six weeks. He died 39 hours later. The crisis Deputed on the front pages of newspapers throughout the country, which puts pressure on the federal health authorities to allocate money for neonatal research.

“The Kennedy story was a big turning point,” said Dr. Sunshine Aha News, a publication of the American Hospital Association, in 1998. “After that, federal research money for neonatal care became much easier to get.”

As head of Stanford’s Neonatology Department from 1967 to 1989, Dr. Sunshine Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, doctors who continued to work in neonatal Intensive Care units around the world. When he retired in 2022, at the age of 92, the survival rate for babies with 28 weeks was more than 90 percent.

“Phil is one of the ‘originals’ in Neonatology, the neonatologist of a neonatologist, one of the best of our history,” David K. Stevenson, Dr.’s successor Sunshine as head of Stanford’s neonatal department, wrote in the Journal of Perinatology in 2011. “He is comfortable with the great leaders in neonatology and is more than a pioneer. He is one of the creators of our discipline.

Dr. Sunshine acknowledged that the care for Premies required both technical expertise and human connection. He insisted on hospitals to enable parents to visit neonatal intensive care units so that they could hold their children, and felt that skin-to-skin contact between mothers and babies was favorable.

He also gave nurses more autonomy and encouraged them to speak when they thought doctors were wrong.

“Our nurses have always been very important carers,” said Dr. Sunshine in oral history. “During my career I worked with a nursing staff that would often recognize problems in the baby before the doctors would do that, and they still do that now. Well, we learned neonatology together.”

Cecele Quaintance, a neonatal nurse who for more than 50 years with Dr. Sunshine has worked, said in one Blog post For Stanford Medicine Children’s Health that “there is a deep friendliness in Phil – for babies, for us, for everyone.”

“Everyone has the same level of interest to him,” she said, and added, “I saw sat crying when he assumed because they were so attached to him.”

The hours were long; The pressure was extraordinary.

“He was a calming, reassuring presence and completely unpod”, “” Dr. Stevenson said in an interview. “He would say,” If you are going to spend the whole night in the hospital with your tail to finish, what is a better way to do that than by giving someone 80, 90 years of life? “

Philip Sunshine was born on June 16, 1930 in Denver. His parents, Samuel and Mollie (Fox) Sunshine, had a pharmacy.

He obtained his bachelor’s degree at the University of Colorado in 1952 and then stayed there for the medical school and graduated in 1955.

After his first year of Residence in Stanford, he was set up in the American Navy and served as a lieutenant. When he returned to Stanford in 1959, he trained under Louis GluckA pediatrician who later developed modern neonatal intensive care unit at Yale University.

“He turned me up to take care of newborns and made everything so interesting,” Dr. Sunshine said.

At that time there were no neonatological fellowships, so Dr. Sunshine Advanced training in pediatric gastroenterology and a fellowship in pediatric metabolism.

“This was a very exciting time,” he said In the Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Blog Post. “People with different backgrounds brought their skills to the care of newborns: pulmonologists, cardiologists, people like me who were interested in GI problems of newborns. I took a lot of information and enthusiasm from them, and we had many opportunities to change how babies were cared for.”

Dr. Sunshine married Sara Elizabeth Vreeland, known as Beth, in 1962.

Together with his wife and daughter Diana, he is survived by four other children, Rebecca, Samuel, Michael and Stephanie; And nine grandchildren.

In many ways, the surname of Dr. Sunshine an aptronym – a word that was ideal for his profession and way of being.

“Fully separated from the father – or the grandfather – from neonatology, he really brought sunshine in every room,” Susan R. Hintz, A neonatologist at Stanford, said in an interview. “He was a soothing presence, especially at these very stressful moments. Nurses would tell me all the time:” He is the one who remembers everyone. “