150 years Langenbeck's Archives--from case-based to evidence-based to personalized surgery.

摘要

Langenbeck's Archive, founded in 1860 in Berlin by B. Langenbeck, Th. Billroth und G. Gurlt, is considered to be, worldwide, the oldest scientific surgical journal being continuously published since 150 years. After introducing in clinical routine, in 1846, ether narcosis and, in 1867, surgical antisepsis in operating theatres and patients' wounds, the application of surgical procedures and the advancement of surgical sciences took fascinating and breathtaking upturns worldwide. Major inventions and clinical inaugurations of surgical procedures furnished proof by German surgeons in the second half of the nineteenth century. Performing a first procedure with application of a new technique was a case-based experience of surgeons. All first surgical procedures were applied after having finished animal experiments to study the technical aspect and to objectify the early consequences of the procedure. W. Kausch, the inaugurator of the Kausch-Whipple procedure performed hundreds of pancreatic operations in geese, as he was an assistant of the internist Naunyn in Strasbourg. Animal experiments and studies in corpses were considered to be necessary research work to reduce the risk of failure before applying a new surgical treatment to patients. However, all the first surgical procedures applied are based on meticulous observations of one or a few cases before operation and the condition of the individual patient to be operated, but the risk of surgical procedures was still high.