René Le Fort

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René Le Fort (ca.1943)

René Le Fort (born March 30, 1869 in Lille , † March 30, 1951 ibid) was a French surgeon. According to him, are Le Fort fractures named, a division of the midface fractures .

Life

Youth and education

René Le Fort was born on March 30, 1869 into a family of medical doctors, both his father and his great-uncle and uncle ( Leon Le Fort, famous in France at the time ) were doctors. In 1888 René Le Fort took first place in the entrance examination for medical studies and graduated two years later as the youngest doctor in France to date. His thesis was entitled Topographie cranio-cérébrale avec applications chirurgicales (German Craniozerebrale Topografie and their surgical applications ). First he worked as an assistant doctor and later as a military surgeon for the French army at the Val-de-Grâce hospital .

Early academic career

Schematic representation of the Le Fort fractures:
Le Fort I fracture (red line)
Le Fort II fracture (blue line)
Le Fort III fracture (green line)
Three-dimensional reconstruction of a computed tomography image of a Le Fort I fracture

In 1899, Le Fort decided to pursue a university career. He returned to his native Lille, where he accepted a teaching position at the medical university. Two years later, in 1901, Le Fort published three papers in quick succession that dealt with skull fractures in humans. The article entitled Fractures de la mâchoire supérieure (German fractures of the upper jaw ) appeared in the Revue de Chirurgie and carried out research results that Le Fort had already roughly outlined a year earlier in a shorter article.

Le Fort described three types of fractures of the midface using the example of a total of 35 cases. For this he had obtained corpses from cemeteries and anatomical institutes and inflicted injuries on the face either by hitting them, probably with a solid block or club, or by hitting the head on a tabletop. He varied the angle of attack and power. The result was three characteristic fracture courses, which are now named after Le Fort :

  • Le Fort I - horizontal break through the upper jaw (maxilla), directly above the teeth and palate (palatum)
  • Le Fort II - pyramidal fracture of the upper jaw with involvement of both eye sockets (orbits)
  • Le Fort III - fracture at the level of the eye sockets and cheekbones with detachment of large parts of the facial skull ( viscerocranium )

One of the key findings of this study was the confirmation of Le Fort's hypothesis that fractures of the midface do not continue towards the base of the skull . There is no evidence that the experiments, as is often claimed, took place in Paris . It is also unclear whether other people besides Le Fort were involved. Unlike later works, however, they did not receive any special attention in France, which only changed when they were translated into English in 1946. Le Fort later turned increasingly to orthopedic surgery . In 1905 he married and had a daughter and two sons.

Another military career

At the beginning of the First Balkan War in 1912, Le Fort reported again for use in the military. He treated soldiers at the front and continued this work in the First World War that followed shortly thereafter . Le Fort received a Commendation for Valor for its operations during the Battle of Dinant . During the last two years of the war he was stationed in Versailles , where he mainly dealt with chest and heart problems and was one of the first to operate on the large body veins and on the heart. As a result of this work, Le Fort published the work Les Projectiles inclus dans le mediastin (German projectiles in the middle skin ) in 1918 , which again set standards. After the war he ran the Hôpital des Invalides until 1919 before returning to Lille in 1920.

Professor in Lille and scientific fame

In Lille, Le Fort received a professorship in operative medicine and the chair in pediatric surgery and orthopedics . He also volunteered at the Zuydcoote Sanatorium , where he researched treatments for bone tuberculosis . In the following decades he wrote numerous publications, traveled widely around the world and received various honors: in 1936 he was awarded the Prix ​​Laborie and in the same year he became President of the Société française de chirurgie orthopédique et traumatologique (SOFCOT). As a well-traveled scientist, he was also temporarily deputy chairman of the French Geographic Society. He retired in 1937, but returned to the Université de Lille again during the Second World War to replace former colleagues who were on the war mission. The last years of his life were marked by a serious illness that tied him to a wheelchair. René Le Fort died in Lille on his 82nd birthday.

supporting documents

Original work

  • René Le Fort: Étude expérimentale sur les fractures de la mâchoire supérieure . In: Rec Chir Paris . tape 23 . Paris 1901, p. 208-227 .
    • René Le Fort: Experimental study of fractures of the upper jaw . In: J Plast Reconstr Surg . tape 50 . Paris 1972, p. 497–506 (French: Étude expérimentale sur les fractures de la mâchoire supérieure . Translated by P. Tessier).
  • René Le Fort: Les Projectiles inclus dans le médiastin . Alcan, 1918, p. 255 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Gartshore 2010 , p. 173.
  2. ↑ a b Noffze & Tubbs 2011 , p. 278.
  3. ↑ a b c d Noffze & Tubbs 2011 , p. 279.
  4. ↑ Rowe 1971 , p. 346.
  5. ↑ Noffze & Tubbs 2011 , S. 282nd
personal data
SURNAME Le Fort, René
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French surgeon
DATE OF BIRTH March 30, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Lille
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1951
Place of death Lille