Leonid Rogozov

Leonid Ivanovich Rogozov ( Russian Леони́д Ива́нович Ро́гозов , scientific transliteration Leonid Ivanovič Rogozov ; born March 14, 1934 in the station Daurija, Borzja district, Chita Oblast , Russian SFSR , Soviet Union ; † September 21, 2000 in Saint Petersburg ) was a surgeon who became world-famous because in 1961 he became the second person, after Evan O'Neill Kane, to perform an appendectomy on himself under local anesthesia .

Early years

Rogozov was born in 1934 in the village (station) Daurija, Chita Oblast (today Transbaikalia region ), a remote town only 17 km from the eastern triangle of the Soviet Union, China and Mongolia, where the Chinese city of Manjur is also located.

His father Ivan Prokhorovich Rogosow (1905–1943) was a driver, mother Evdokija Jemeljanowna (* 1908) was a milker. Rogozov was the third of four children. Soon after his birth, his family was relocated to Alma-Ata for political reasons and in 1936 moved to Minusinsk , Krasnoyarsk Territory , where Rogozov went to secondary school. His father was killed at the front in World War II in 1943. After the seventh grade, Rogozov attended the forest school. After that, however, he returned to general education school and graduated. After serving in the army, he began studying medicine at the Therapeutic Faculty of the Leningrad Pediatric Institute (now Saint Petersburg State Pediatric Medical University )

Work in the Antarctic

Rogozov graduated in 1959 and immediately began his specialist training as a surgeon. Although he was close to completing his dissertation, he interrupted his surgical specialist training after about a year, as he was a doctor on the 6th Soviet Antarctic Expedition . Together with the twelve other expedition members, he set off on November 5, 1960 with the ship “Ob” for the Antarctic, where they arrived in December 1960 after 36 days of sea voyage. After nine weeks of preparatory work, the new Soviet Novolasarewskaya Antarctic station was opened on February 18, 1961 in the Schirmacher Oasis . In addition to his main job as an expedition doctor, he was also employed as a meteorologist and as a driver. The event that made the 27-year-old surgeon world famous happened during the first winter in the Antarctic station.

illness

On the morning of April 29, 1961, Rogozov discovered alarming symptoms in himself: weakness, nausea, increased body temperature and pain in the right lower abdomen. On April 30th, the temperature continued to rise and he developed symptoms of localized peritonitis suggestive of appendicitis. His diagnosis: acute appendicitis . Conservative treatment (rest, local cooling and antibiotics) was unsuccessful. By the evening of April 30th, his condition deteriorated significantly. Since he was the only doctor on the 13-person expedition, he could not expect any help in his life-threatening condition on site. Help from surrounding Antarctic stations was also not possible. The weather was extremely bad and there were no planes in research stations in other countries. The nearest Soviet Antarctic station that had an airplane was Mirny Station , over 1,600 miles away. In order to save his life, Rogozov had no choice but to carry out the operation on himself immediately.

surgery

The only operating room available was an empty accommodation except for a bed and two bedside cabinets. He was supported by the meteorologist Aleksander Artemjew, who handed him the necessary instruments, and by the mechanical engineer Sinowi Teplinski. His job was to allow Rogozov to see the surgical wound with a small round mirror and to provide makeshift lighting with a table lamp. The head of the polar station, Vladislav Gerbowitsch, was on hand in the event that one of the other two helpers passed out during the operation and could fail. After all, the helpers had never been to a bloody medical procedure before. Rogozov later reported that his two white-coated helpers were pale as a sheet at the beginning of the operation.

Rogozov began the operation on May 1 at 2 a.m. local time (10 p.m. Moscow time). He was lying half on his left side, his torso raised. After a local anesthetic with Novocaine 0.5%, he made a 12 cm incision in the right lower abdomen with a scalpel . Another member of the expedition was briefly allowed to enter the room to take photos.

At times, Rogozov looked in the mirror for the operation, sometimes he just worked by feeling, feeling the surgical wound with his bare hands. He removed the inflamed appendix and applied antibiotics to the abdominal cavity. The inflamed appendix was just before the perforation (according to other information, it already had a perforation about 2 by 2 cm in size at the base).

30 to 40 minutes after the start of the operation, Rogozow developed severe general weakness with dizziness. As a result, he had to take a short break during the operation. The operation was over after a total of 1 hour and 45 minutes.

Five days later, his body temperature normalized, and after another two days the sutures were removed. Two weeks after the operation, he was able to go back to his duties on the expedition team.

Further life

Rogozov returned to Leningrad with the rest of the team from the Antarctic expedition in October 1962. After a year, he completed his training as a surgeon in October 1963. In March 1963 he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and in the same year began an apprenticeship at the Pediatric Institute in Leningrad . After three years, he successfully defended his dissertation in 1966 as a candidate for science (equivalent to a doctorate) with the title: "On the resection of the lower third of the esophagus in esophageal cancer ".

In his further professional life, Rogozov initially worked as a surgeon from 1966 to 1967, then until 1979 as an assistant professor for clinical surgery at the First Medical School "Academician IP Pavlov" Leningrad. He then worked again from 1979 to 1986 as a surgeon at various hospitals in Leningrad. From 1986 to 2000 he was head of the department for surgery of lymph-abdominal tuberculosis at the Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) Research Institute for Phthisiopneumology. In 1971 he was on business in Bulgaria . He spoke fluent Bulgarian and was able to communicate in German, English and Czech.

Rogozov died in Saint Petersburg at the age of 66 from postoperative complications after an operation for a bronchial carcinoma .

In the Arctic and Antarctic Museum in Saint Petersburg, the surgical instruments with which Rogozov performed the operation are on display.

See also

• Jerri Nielsen

literature

• LI Rogozov: Self Operation . In: Soviet Antarctic Expedition. Information bulletin . tape 1 . Elsevier , Amsterdam 1964, pp. 223-224 .
• Vladislav Rogozov, Neil Bermel: Auto-appendectomy in the Antarctic: case report . In: BMJ . Christmas, 2009, p. 339 , doi : 10.1136 / bmj.b4965 .

Web links

• Photo of Rogozov's self-operation
• Self-operation: Tracking down a good story ( Memento from November 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (English; with a photo of the operation)