Auto-appendicectomy
Auto-appendicectomy: three landmark self-appendectomy cases—Kane (1921), McLaren (1944), Rogozov (1961)—and what they reveal about surgery in extremis.
Category General Surgery
Théodore Tuffier
Théodore Tuffier (1857–1929): Paris surgeon and innovator; thoracic/cardiac pioneer, early open-chest massage, valve experiments, spinal anaesthesia and Tuffier’s line.
Cope’s Sign
Cardio-biliary reflex (“Cope sign”): gallbladder disease causing vagal bradycardia or AV block that mimics cardiac events, often with normal troponin.
Vincent Cope
Sir Vincent Zachary Cope (1881 – 1974) was a British physician and surgeon. Eponymously linked with Cope Psoas test and obturator test.
Leonid Rogozov
Leonid Rogozov (1934–2000): Soviet surgeon who performed a self-appendicectomy in Antarctica (1961) when evacuation was impossible—an iconic feat of austere medicine.
Evan O’Neill Kane
Evan O’Neill Kane (1864–1932), American country surgeon. Railway accident specialist and medical inventor, famed for his 1921 auto-appendicectomy.
Quincke’s Triad
Quincke's Triad describes hemobilia via the triad of GI bleeding, biliary colic, and jaundice; first detailed by Heinrich Quincke in 1871, named retrospectively in 1975
Howship-Romberg sign
Howship-Romberg sign: pain and paraesthesia along the distribution of the obturator nerve (medial thigh to knee); a clinical indicator of obturator nerve compression, commonly due to an obturator hernia
William Halsted
William Halsted (1852–1922), pioneering American surgeon, revolutionized surgery with aseptic technique, anesthesia, gloves, and the residency training model.
Chilaiditi syndrome
Chilaiditi sign: rare condition with bowel loops interposed between liver and diaphragm, with symptoms (syndrome). Must differentiate from free air.
George Hoyt Whipple
George Hoyt Whipple (1878–1976), Nobel winner, advanced anaemia therapy, coined thalassaemia, and described Whipple disease in 1907.
Mark Ravitch
Mark M. Ravitch, pioneering pediatric surgeon, innovator of the Ravitch procedure, stapling, intussusception care, and Cantrell’s sequence.