78. Thoraxchirurgie. Historisches und Erreichtes

Abstract

Following adoption of the differential airways pressure principle (Sauerbruch), continuous positive airway pressure breathing, together with earlier physiological and clinical preliminary reports on artificial lung ventilation, was a major step on the way to intratracheal anesthesia, which was brought to perfection only after World War II. Up to then, the earlier method that Sauerbruch had used in his pioneer work had been prevalent in thoracic surgery. Since Sauerbruch's death, surgery of the heart and thoracic vessels has developed most successfully, while pulmonary tuberculosis now has hardly any surgical significance.

Ernst Ferdinand Sauerbruch: Rise and Fall of the Pioneer of Thoracic Surgery

“…Ferdinand Sauerbruch's earliest and probably greatest contribution to surgery was the development of the pressure-differential chamber in 1904 that prevented the collapse of lungs due to air entry into the thorax following thoracotomy [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. He was hence responsible for initiating and developing intrathoracic operations [12][13][14][15][27][28][29][30][31][32] on the lungs [33][34][35], pericardium [36], heart [37,38], and esophagus [39,40]. To perform surgical procedures on these organs effectively he designed lightweight, long-handled thoracic surgical instruments [41], including special lung forceps (Fig.…”