Edward Earle Shouldice

Edward Earle Shouldice (born  October 3, 1890 in Chesley, Bruce County , Ontario , †  August 20, 1965 in Thornhill, Ontario ) was a Canadian surgeon . He developed a surgical technique for the treatment of hernias , which was named after him as an inguinal hernia operation after Shouldice , and is thus one of the pioneers of hernia surgery.

Life

Edward Earle Shouldice was born on a farm near Chesley, Ontario in 1890 . While still growing up, the family moved to a ranch near Calgary where he graduated from high school . After studying theology for a year at Victoria College, University of Toronto , he began studying medicine , which he completed in Toronto in 1916 . He did military service as a medical officer during the First World War and then returned to Toronto, where he settled in private practice. He also taught anatomy at the University of Toronto Medical School for 26 years .

After the beginning of the Second World War , he served as an advisory surgeon for the Medical Commission of the Canadian Armed Forces . During this time he began to deal with the surgical treatment of hernias . He developed a new surgical method, which he presented to the professional world for the first time in 1944 at the annual meeting of the Ontario Medical Association and which he subsequently improved. From the 1980s onwards, it was used as an inguinal hernia operation according to Shouldice, alongside the Lichtenstein operation, which goes back to Irving L. Lichtenstein . Their advantages over the previously common procedures were, in particular, the use of local anesthesia instead of an operation under general anesthesia, as well as the significantly reduced time for the patient to recover.

After the end of the war, Edward Earle Shouldice opened his own private clinic in Toronto under the name Shouldice Surgery in 1945 . Eight years later, he expanded the clinic, which has existed as the Shouldice Hernia Center to the present day, to a second location in Thornhill, Ontario , a suburb of Toronto. He also traveled extensively over the next two decades to demonstrate his surgical technique to surgeons in other countries. He was married, had a son and a daughter, and died in 1965 of a heart attack in Thornhill Hospital, which is part of his clinic .

Works (selection)

• The Treatment of Hernia. In: Ontario Medical Review. 1953, pp. 1-14
• Staphylococcic Wound Infections; Study of Wound Infections in Several Thousand Hernia Cases. In: Journal of the American Medical Association. 170/1959, pp. 1274-1283
• Sinus Formation Following Infected Herniorrhaphy Incisions: A Study of Sinuses Occurring after the Use of Silk only, Wire only or a Combination of the Two. In: Canadian Medical Association Journal. 18/1961, pp. 576-579

literature

• Robert Bendavid: Pioneers in Hernia Surgery. Biography: Edward Earle Shouldice (1890-1965). In: Hernia . 7 (4) / 2003. Springer, pp. 172-177, ISSN  1265-4906
• Obituaries. Dr. E. Earle Shouldice, 74. In: Canadian Medical Association Journal. Volume 93, October 16, 1965 edition. Canadian Medical Association, p. 888, ISSN  1488-2329
• E. Byrnes Shouldice: The Shouldice Repair for Groin Hernias. In: Surgical Clinics of North America . 83/2003. WB Saunders Company, pp. 1163-1187, ISSN  0039-6109