Korones gave the smallest a chance
Neonatal ICU pioneer, 89, dies
When Dr. Sheldon Korones founded the city’s first neonatal intensive care unit in 1968, it was so cutting edge that it was one of the first units in the country devoted to saving babies who were born prematurely.
“He had a passion to help these babies when it was not that popular. Long before other neonatologists decided that we should be saving babies that small, he was out there trying to save every baby that showed signs of life and was fighting for life,” said Dr. Ramasubbareddy Dhanireddy, who stepped into Dr. Korones’ shoes when he retired in 2009 from the hospital unit that bears his name, the Sheldon B. Korones Newborn Center at the Regional Medical Center at Memphis.
Dr. Korones, 89, died late Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. He had been treated for cancer and died in his sleep, said his son, Dr. David Korones. It followed 41 years spent trying to improve the odds for babies in a county with one of the highest infant mortality rates in the nation. The rate has fallen over the years, dropping in 2011 for the first time to fewer than 10 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Before becoming the champion of struggling infants in the city’s public hospital, Dr. Korones, a graduate of the University of Tennessee, had been in private practice as a pediatrician. “He began working sort of half his time at the hospital. He was kind of in both of those worlds for a while and was seeing a huge gap in the children in private hospitals and in the public hospital. I think that began to gnaw at him,” said his daughter, Susan Korones Gifford.
Documentary filmmaker Craig Leake spent
about a year following Dr. Korones in his practice for a film, “Babyland,” which ran as an episode of the ABC-TV series “20/20” in 2010. Leake said he soon learned that those around the doctor recognized “how special he was. There were people who recognized this guy made a lot of sense. It’s not just that his heart was in the right place, but that he was a scientist. He knew the relationship between poverty and illness.”
Leake said Dr. Korones faced national statistics showing that high infant mortality rates are related to high rates of poverty, lack of prenatal care, girls getting pregnant too early and having second and third babies before their bodies had a chance to recuperate.
To help students and interns see the big picture, Leake said Dr. Korones sometimes came off as “tough,” but used wit to make the students think about their young patients. He would use modern technology to understand a patient’s immediate needs and conditions, but he encouraged them to use intuition and experience to interpret the data. “He would say, ‘Don’t give me a snapshot. Give me a movie.”
David Korones, a pediatric oncologist, said his father’s innovations in the field were primarily related to manipulating systems and people “to serve large numbers of babies.” He set up a portable neonatal intensive care unit in a bus, which traveled to small towns outside Memphis to attempt to rescue struggling babies. He set up X-ray and diagnostic blood testing inside the neonatal unit to save crucial time in emergencies.
Dr. Helen Morrow, health officer for Shelby County, trained under Dr. Korones, and described him as driven and a visionary. “He was demanding about the way he wanted things done.”
His son said that drive and passion to help babies led to frustration at the high mortality rates. In turn, he said, the frustration “was part of what drove him. There was so much to do and so little time to do it. He was constantly frustrated on many levels, insurance companies not paying for things that babies needed and deserved.”
Dhanireddy called his predecessor a “towering figure. He came with a mission. God put him here to do good work, and he made a great mark in the field.”
Dr. Korones leaves his wife, Judith Korones; daughter Susan of Montclair, N.J., and son David of Rochester, N.Y. His funeral will be at 3 p.m. Friday at Temple Israel with burial in Temple Israel Cemetery. Canale Funeral Directors has charge.