D.O. Ott – Pioneer of Endoscopic Appendectomy
A.V. Fedorov,V. E. Olovyanny, S. P.
Glyantsev
Institute of Surgery A.V. Veshnevskogo, Moscow, Russia;
Northern Medical Centre, Arkhangelsk, Russia; Scientific
Centre of Cardiovascular Surgery A.N. Bakuleva, Moscow,
Russia
 The
article provides unknown to most surgeons facts
concerning the first appendectomy through colpotomy
performed by Russian gynecologist Dmitry
Ott one hundred years ago. An endoscopic method -
ventroscopy - was used in order to perform this
operation. The data discovered support with new evidence
the authors´ statement about Dmitry Ott as the founder
of endoscopic surgery. The first endoscopic
appendectomy is believed to have been performed by
German gynecologist K. Semm in 1982 [1]. This is a
well-known and widely described in literature fact. Yet
the results of our medicohistorical study raise doubts
about its truthfulness. We have already written about
Russian gynecologist Dmitry O. Ott from St.-Petersburg -
the founder of ventroscopy, an endoscopic method of
abdominal cavity examination that preceded G. Kelling's
laparoscopic technique. We were the first to discover
that Dr. Ott's ventroscopy had been the minimally
invasive surgical method in abdominal surgery of the
time [2, 6]. To prove this statement we gave examples of
gynecological operations through colpotomy performed by
Dr. Ott at the beginning of the XX century during which
he simultaneously made an endoscopic diagnosis of
concomitant abdominal pathology (gallbladder stones,
omental tumors, nephroptosis etc.). Furthermore, Dr.
Ott's publication of 1908 mentions two appendectomies
performed on patients with empyema appendicularis, with
the author pointing out that “both these cases of
operating through vaginal access are, by the way, first
ever described in literature, which can be easily
explained by the very fact that due to the lack of
illumination such operations are hardly feasible”.
In respect to the history of endoscopic surgery, this
fact, so far unknown to most surgeons, seemed
interesting to us and stimulated our further search for
historical data on these operations. The present article
came as a result of our work. We ascertained that the
first mention of the operations on appendix through
colpotomy performed by Dr. Ott belongs not to the
surgeon himself but to G. P. Serezhnikov, the senior
doctor of the Obstetric Institute headed by Dr. Ott in
1893-1917. In his speech at the session of The Sientific
Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists held November
30, 1906 in St.-Petersburg Serezhnikov told about the
appendectomy after hysterovariectomy by means of
posterior colpotomy performed by Dr. Ott on April 26,
1906. “In professor Ott’s clinic, while making the final
examination by means of long illuminated specula, we
always pay attention to the appendix of the caecum”,
reported the speaker. This woman’s “appendix appeared to
be strongly thickened and deformed… Due to that it was
ablated through vagina according to general rules” [4]. |
