Kurt Semm

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Kurt Karl Stephan Semm (born March 23, 1927 in Munich ; † July 16, 2003 in Tucson , Arizona ) was a German gynecologist . He is considered the founder of laparoscopic surgery .

Life

Kurt Karl Stephan Semm was born in Munich in 1927, his parents were the Catholic married couple Margarete and Karl Semm, who worked as a production engineer. Semm attended a secondary school in Munich. After a serious traffic accident at the age of six, he developed the desire to become a doctor . Towards the end of the Second World War , Semm was drafted into the German armed forces at the age of 17 and was taken prisoner by the Soviets . After the war he was initially unable to study. Therefore graduated Semm a precision mechanic apprenticeship before 1946 still at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich enrolled was. He financed his studies in part by manufacturing and selling toys. In 1950 he put the medical state examination down, was established in 1951 with the title summa cum laude for his work activity determinations of serum oxytocinase as pregnancy reaction doctorate in 1958 with a thesis on the labor problem considering the oxytocin-budget oxytocinase under the later Nobel laureate Adolf Butenandt habilitation . In the same year he married his wife Roswitha von Morozovicz. Semm initially worked as an assistant at the II. University Women's Clinic in Munich under Richard Fikentscher . After completing his habilitation , he became the second senior physician at the Lindwurmstrasse Women's Clinic in 1959 . In 1964 he was appointed adjunct professor at the University of Munich and from 1966 he was senior physician at the 2nd Women's Clinic in Munich . In 1970 Kurt Semm moved to the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel as full professor and director of the university women's clinic and director of the Michaelis midwifery school as successor to Herbert Huber . From 1973 on he also headed the gynecology department at the University's Center for Operative Medicine. His wife Roswitha died of breast cancer in 1986 . The marriage had remained childless. In 1994 he married the Irish gynecologist Iseult O'Neill. She brought her daughter Tara Virginia into the marriage from a previous relationship and had their son Kurt Patrick with Kurt Semm.

In 1995 Semm retired and Walter Jonat was his successor in Kiel . He and his family moved to Tucson , Arizona , where he died on July 16, 2003, at the age of 76, of complications from Parkinson's disease . Kurt Semm was buried on August 1, 2003 in the Solln forest cemetery in Munich.

Act

Richard Fikentscher aroused Semm's interest in treating patients with an unfulfilled desire to have children. Together with him and Josef-Peter Emmrich ( Magdeburg ), Paul Jordan ( Münster ) and Harry Tillman (Gießen), he founded the German Society for the Study of Fertility and Sterility in Munich in 1957, which was renamed the German Society for Reproductive Medicine in 1998.

The work of Hans Frangenheim , who had been laparoscoping women for diagnosis since 1944 , and Raoul Palmer, an American surgeon who worked in France, inspired Semm to devote himself to laparoscopy , which he called pelviscopy . The term should clarify the difference between gynecological laparoscopy, which mainly deals with the organs in the pelvis ( pelvis ), and those of other specialties in the upper abdomen. In 1967 he introduced laparoscopy for gynecological diagnostics at the women's clinic in Munich. Semen's goal, however, was a minimally invasive, bloodless and gentle surgery possible. He wanted to use the endoscopic technology not only for diagnostic purposes, as it was already generally accepted at the time, but also to expand the spectrum considerably. As a trained precision mechanic, he developed many instruments himself, such as an automatic CO 2 insufflator, a uterine manipulator, as well as devices for checking fallopian tube patency and for training laparoscopic surgery, the so-called pelvitrainer . Semm developed thermocoagulation for hemostasis and knotting techniques for endoscopic use. He adapted the Röder sling for use in gynecological endoscopy.

On September 12, 1980, Semm performed an appendectomy for the first time in the world using the laparoscopic method at the Kiel University Women's Clinic . Johannes Dietl acted as assistant . In the same year he described the first removal of an ovary with the Roeder sling and in 1984 the laparoscopic-assisted vaginal hysterectomy .

Appreciation

With his laparoscopic surgery, Kurt Semm often met with fierce opposition. During a presentation on laparoscopic removal of an ovarian cyst , an opponent of the technique unplugged the slide projector and stated that the surgery was unethical. The endoscopic technique has often been referred to simply as nonsense. In the 1970s it was still claimed by medical colleagues that only people with brain damage would perform such a surgery and advised Semm to have a brain examination. From 1975 to 1980 his idea of ​​a laparoscopic cholecystectomy was rejected by general surgeons. In 1981, after Semm's lecture on laparoscopic appendectomy, the President of the German Society for Surgery demanded in a letter to the board of the German Society for Gynecology and Obstetrics that Kurt Semm's license be withdrawn. A scientific publication on laparoscopic appendectomy in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology was rejected on the grounds that the technique was unethical.

However, after many courses held by Semm in the USA, surgical laparoscopy was soon accepted there. Laparoscopic surgery came back to Germany from there via this detour and was then able to establish itself here as well. Today, many endoscopic interventions are standard operations.

Awards

Kurt Semm has repeatedly been honored nationally and internationally for his achievements.

The Gynecological Endoscopy Working Group of the German Society for Gynecology and Obstetrics awards a Kurt Semm Prize for scientific video contributions in the fields of hysteroscopy and laparoscopic surgery .

Fonts

  • Determination of the activity of serum oxytocinase as a pregnancy reaction. Dissertation . Medical Faculty, Munich 1951.
  • The oxytocin-oxytocinase household: with special attention to the labor problem. Habilitation thesis . Medical Faculty, Munich 1958.
  • The labor problem with special consideration of the oxytocin-oxytocinase balance. In: Journal of Obstetrics. 154, 1960, pp. 69-77.
  • Pelviscopy and hysteroscopy - color atlas a. Textbook. Schattauer Verlag, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-7945-0442-9 .
  • Atlas of gynecologic laparoscopy and hysteroscopy. Saunders, Philadelphia 1977, ISBN 0-7216-8063-1 .
  • Slide atlas of pelviscopy, hysteroscopy and fetoscopy. 1979.
  • Endoscopic appendectomy. In: Endoscopy . 15: 59-64 (1983). PMID 6221925
  • Operating theory for endoscopic abdominal surgery: operative pelviscopy, operative laparoscopy Schattauer Verlag, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-7945-0391-0 .
  • Pelviscopy - operational guidelines for "minimally invasive surgery" following an organ oriented classification. WISAP, Sauerlach b. Munich 1992, ISBN 3-922500-46-3 .
  • Pelviscopy, a surgical guide based on an organ-oriented classification for "minimally invasive surgery". WISAP, Sauerlach b. Munich 1991, ISBN 3-922500-41-2 .
  • Total Uterus Mucosa Ablatio (TUMA) - C * U * R * T * instead of endometrial ablation . In: obstetric women's health. 52: 773-777 (1992). doi: 10.1055 / s-2007-1023810
  • Technical surgical steps of endoscopic appendectomy. In: Langenbecks Arch Chir. 376, 1991, pp. 121-126. PMID 1829131
  • as publisher: Chronicle of Kiel University Women's Clinic and Michaelis Midwifery School: 1805–1995; a medical-historical study for the 190th anniversary. Center for Operative Medicine Kiel, 1995, ISBN 3-922500-57-9 .
  • Endoscopic subtotal hysterectomy without colpotomy: classic intrafascial SEMM hysterectomy. A new method of hysterectomy by pelviscopy, laparotomy, per vaginam or functionally by total uterine mucosal ablation. In: Int Surg. 81, 1996, pp. 362-370. PMID 9127796
  • with L. Mettler : Subtotal versus total laparoscopic hysterectomy. In: Acta Obstet Gynecol Scand Suppl. 164 (1997), pp. 88-93. PMID 9225648
  • with I. Semm: Maintenance of Body Temperature at Laparoscopic Surgery. In: Surg Technol Int. VIII (2000), pp. 39-43. PMID 12451507
  • with D. Turner: The Role of Computers and Robotics in Endoscopic Surgery. In: Surg Technol Int. VIII (2000), pp. 23-27. PMID 12451505
  • Operations without a scalpel: a gynecologist as a pioneer of minimally invasive medicine. (Autobiography), ecomed Verlag, Landsberg 2002, ISBN 3-609-20152-5 .
  • with L. Mettler: Endoscopic Abdominal Surgery in Gynecology. Schattauer Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-7945-1965-5 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ K. Semm: The change from laparotomy to minimally invasive surgery: here pelviscopy. In: Arch Gynecol Obstet. 245, 1989, pp. 19-21, doi: 10.1007 / BF02417155
  2. ^ Grzegorz S. Litynski: Kurt Semm and the Fight against Skepticism: Endoscopic Hemostasis, Laparoscopic Appendectomy, and Semm's Impact on the "Laparoscopic Revolution" . In: Journal of the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons . No. 2 , 1998, p. 309-313 , PMC 3015306 (free full text).
  3. ↑ Kurt Semm (ed.): Chronicle of Kiel University Women's Clinic and Michaelis Midwifery School 1805–1995. A medical-historical study for the 190th anniversary. Self-published, Kiel 1995, ISBN 3-922500-57-9 , p. 62.
  4. ↑ K. Bhattacharya: Kurt Semm: A laparoscopic crusader . In: Journal of Minimal Access Surgery . No. 3 , 2007, p. 35-36 , doi : 10.4103 / 0972-9941.30686 .
personal data
SURNAME Semm, Kurt
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Semm, Kurt Karl Stephan (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German gynecologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH July 16, 2003
Place of death Tucson