Aladár Petz (1888–1956) and His World-Renowned Invention: The Gastric Stapler

Abstract

Accessible online at: www.karger.com/dsu ‘I designed the gastro-intestinal suturing instrument in 1920 while working as an assistant professor. The idea stemmed from the need that the surgeon has to open the digestive tract with its highly contaminated lumen, thereby, risking consequent peritonitis with its associated increase in mortality. Simple manual suturing of the infected lumen of the intestine is time consuming, thus prolonging surgery and increasing the risk of mortality for patients under anaesthesia.’ This statement was written by Aladar Petz, describing the surgical instrument he designed and which brought him international acclaim. He was born in Győr in 1888. This historical city is situated in the western part of Hungary between Budapest and Vienna. He completed his secondary education here, then graduated with a medical degree from the Pazmany Peter University of Budapest. From 1911 he worked in the 1st Department of Internal Medicine of the university, but by September 1913 he was a scholar at the 1st Surgical Department with Prof. Dollinger and continued to work there until 1919, slowly rising in rank. During the First World War, he served for 3 years as a military surgeon on the Serbian and Italian fronts. In 1919 he was promoted to assistant professor at the 2nd Surgical Department where he worked until the summer of 1922, when at the age of 34 years he was appointed director and head of the Surgical Department of the Holy Trinity Hospital in Győr. Even in those days, the name Petz had many associations with Győr. His father Lajos Petz had been medical director of the then modern and well-established hospital opened in 1895, which he developed. Although a simple facility had been functioning in Győr since 1749, it had no operating theater and the old hospital lived through the first hundred years of its history when anesthesia was unknown, hence there was no need for operating rooms. In the course of 1889, for instance, only 26 operations were performed in the Győr Hospital featuring an array of surgical interventions in all walks of medicine, from malpresentation to amputation. A total of only 16 laparotomies were performed until the turn of the century. Taking office at the helm of the hospital in 1884, one of the first duties of Lajos Petz was to establish a Surgical Department.