Herbert Olivecrona

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Herbert Olivecrona
Otfrid Foerster , Herbert Olivecrona and Wilhelm Tönnis

Herbert Olivecrona (born July 11, 1891 in Visby , † January 15, 1980 in Stockholm ) was a Swedish neurosurgeon, known as a brain surgeon.

Olivecrona, whose family originally immigrated to Sweden from Finland in the 17th century , was the son of judge Axel Olivecrona (1860-1948) and Countess Ebba Morner and went to school in Uppsala . From 1909 he studied medicine at Uppsala University , from 1912 at the Karolinska Institute , where he was an assistant at the Pathological Institute for two years, as well as at the Pathological Institute of the Municipal Hospitals in Dortmund . In 1918 he graduated and became an assistant at the surgery department at the University Clinic of Leipzig University , where he turned to brain surgery. In 1919 he became an assistant doctor at Serafimer Hospital in Stockholm, the university hospital. In the same year he went to the Hunterian Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University for a year on a scholarship from the American-Swedish Society . There he also learned to work as an observer in the clinic of the famous surgeon William Stewart Halsted . From 1920 he was back at Serafimer Hospital in Stockholm, where he became a senior physician and operated on a large number of brain tumors, as the only surgeon in Sweden at that time. He was supported by the radiologist Erik Lysholm (1891-1947), who was encouraged by Olivecrona from the mid-1920s to develop new diagnostic techniques for brain surgery (such as ventriculography , diagnostic neuroradiology for the precise localization of tumors). Olivecrona received her doctorate in 1922.

From 1924 he was associate professor and from 1935 full professor of neurosurgery at the Karolinska Institute, which he remained until 1960. His chair was one of the first in Europe.

In 1929 he was an intern for a month with the US surgeon Harvey Cushing , who was so impressed by Olivecrona during a visit to Stockholm in 1929 that he invited him to a private banquet with 27 other selected surgeons at the 1931 International Congress of Neurology in Bern .

From 1930 he was chief physician in neurosurgery at Serafimer Hospital in Stockholm with its own department of 50 beds.

One of Olivecrona's best-known patients was the Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy , whom he operated on for a brain tumor under local anesthesia in 1936 . Karinthy wrote down his experiences from the operation under the title "Journey around my skull".

Olivecrona's department became a magnet for neurosurgeons from all over the world who studied with him. In 1960 he retired as a professor, but continued to practice privately.

In 1951 he performed the first hypophysectomy (removal of the pituitary gland, which was surgically difficult to access ). He performed the operation several times as a means of fighting serious cancer.

In 1960 he set up neurosurgery in Cairo at the invitation of the Egyptian government.

In 1956 he received the first Fedor Krause Medal . He has received several honorary doctorates (including Athens, Cologne) and a member of the Leopoldina .

From 1954 he published the handbook of neurosurgery with Wilhelm Tönnis (1898–1978), who had been an assistant at Olivecrona for seven months in the 1930s and had set up a neurosurgical department in Würzburg with his boss Fritz König from 1932 to 1936 . It was published in several volumes by Springer Verlag from 1954 to 1974.

He also re- edited the new edition of Fedor Krause's Special Surgery of Brain Diseases in 1941 (with Berthold Ostertag , Heinrich Schum , Erik Lysholm).

Fonts

  • Surgical treatment of brain tumors: a clinical study , Springer Verlag 1927
  • with Hilding Bergstrand, Wilhelm Tönnis vascular malformations and vascular tumors of the brain , Leipzig, Thieme 1936

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ B. Ljunggren Herbert Olivecrona: founder of swedish neurochirurgy , J. Neurosurgery, Volume 78, 1998, p. 142
  2. ^ Spiegel report, September 1, 1954
  3. ↑ Tönnis brain surgery in Sweden. Reports on a seven-month assistantship at the neurosurgical department Lecturer Dr. Olivecronas in Stockholm , German Journal of Neurology, Volume 131, 1933, p. 205
  4. ↑ Ernst Kern : Seeing - Thinking - Acting of a surgeon in the 20th century. ecomed, Landsberg am Lech 2000, ISBN 3-609-20149-5 , p. 157.
personal data
SURNAME Olivecrona, Herbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish neurosurgeon
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Visby
DATE OF DEATH January 15, 1980
Place of death Stockholm