Dr. John Robert Bach MD

Dr. John R. Bach MD graduated from the now Rutgers New Jersey Medical School in 1976 and is Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and Professor of Neurology on the Legacy Rutgers faculty since 1983. He has been Medical Director of the Howard Rusk Ventilator Unit at New York University, the Kessler Institute ventilator unit, for 40 years, Director, Co-Director, and staff attending of the New Jersey Medical School’s Muscular Dystrophy Association Clinic, and Medical Director of the Center for Ventilator Management Alternatives, University Hospital, Newark, N.J. since 1991. He has over 300 peer-review publications, 200 book chapters, and 12 books on neuromuscular disease, pulmonary rehabilitation, and mechanical ventilation. He reported the first use of robot arms to facilitate daily activities in 1989, cardioprotective medications for muscular dystrophy in 1995, and pioneered the use of up to continuous noninvasive ventilatory support (CNVS) as an alternative to invasive airway tubes and continues to have patients dependent on 24/7 CNVS now for up to 69 years without respiratory complications. He reported the first use of nasal NVS/CNVS in 1984, and extubation to it, rather than tracheotomies, in 1987. Mouthpiece and nasal NVS/CNVS is the third option to extremely undesirable tracheostomy mechanical ventilation and palliative care death for anyone too weak to breathe effectively due to extreme old age and/or respiratory muscle impairment.