Rudolf Ulrich Krönlein

Rudolf Ulrich Krönlein.

Rudolf Ulrich Krönlein (19 February 1847 – 26 October 1910) was a Swiss surgeon who was a native of Stein am Rhein.

Biography

He studied medicine in Zurich, where he was a student and assistant to surgeon Edmund Rose (1836–1914). In 1872 he received his medical doctorate at Zurich with a dissertation on treatment of open wounds.^[1] Later he furthered his studies in Berlin under Bernhard von Langenbeck (1810–1887), and in 1874 became director of the surgical clinic at Giessen. In 1881 he was appointed professor of surgery at the University of Zurich. After his death, he was succeeded by Ferdinand Sauerbruch (1875–1951) as chair of surgery at Zurich.

In 1886 Krönlein published an account of an 1884 appendectomy that he performed on a 17-year old boy. Although the patient died two days after the surgery, it was the first documented case of an appendectomy. He was also a pioneer involving lung resections, and his name is associated with "Krönlein's operation", which is a lateral orbitotomy of the eye. This surgery involves removal of an orbital tumor without excision of the eye.

Associated eponym

• "Krönlein's hernia": A properitoneal inguinal hernia; a hernia having a double sac, one part in the inguinal canal, and the other part projecting from the deep inguinal ring in the subperitoneal tissues.^[2]

Notes

References

• Parts of this article are based on a translation of an article from the German Wikipedia.
• History of Appendicitis Vermiformis, Its diseases and treatment by Arthur C. McCarty, M.D.