The Impact of War & Technology on Surgery Flashcards
All 20 cards in this deck
What were mobile X-ray units used for on the Western Front in the First World War?
They were set up close to the front to identify shrapnel fragments so they could be removed before the wound became infected.
Why was a blood bank created before the Battle of Cambrai (1917)?
In anticipation of heavy casualties, so transfusions were available to stop soldiers dying from blood loss.
Who discovered blood groups, and in what year?
Karl Landsteiner, in 1901.
How were the earliest blood transfusions in the First World War carried out?
With a syringe and tube, donor-to-patient with the donor present, to stop the patient going into shock from blood loss.
Which researchers found ways of storing blood during the First World War?
Lewisohn (sodium citrate stopped blood clotting, 1915), Weil (refrigerated citrated blood, 1915), and Rous and Turner (a citrate-glucose solution that kept blood for weeks, 1916).
Why was storing blood a problem before the First World War?
Blood clotted very quickly once outside the body, so it could not be kept.
Who discovered x-rays, and when?
Wilhelm Roentgen, in 1895.
Give two examples of high-tech surgical treatment in modern hospitals.
Organ transplants and keyhole (or robotic) surgery.
Who set up the blood bank used at the Battle of Cambrai (1917)?
Oswald Hope Robertson, an American army doctor. He stored 22 units of blood in advance and used it to treat wounded men suffering from shock.
Who led advances in plastic surgery for soldiers with facial wounds?
Harold Gillies, at the Queen's Hospital in Sidcup, Kent, who used skin grafts to rebuild damaged faces.
Give one problem with early x-ray machines.
Any one: the machines were bulky and hard to move; patients could suffer radiation burns or hair loss; exposures took a long time, so patients had to keep very still.
Who carried out the first successful human heart transplant, and when?
Christiaan Barnard, in South Africa in 1967. The patient, Louis Washkansky, lived for 18 days.
What is keyhole surgery?
Surgery carried out through very small cuts using fibre-optic cameras and tiny instruments, so patients recover more quickly.
How are lasers used in modern surgery?
Instead of a scalpel, for very precise cutting and for sealing blood vessels, e.g. in eye surgery.
What is radiation therapy used to treat?
Cancer — radiation is aimed at tumours to destroy the cancer cells.
When was the British National Blood Transfusion Service set up?
1938, building on the advances in transfusion and blood storage made during the First World War.
What was the Thomas (Army Leg) Splint used for in the First World War?
It held a broken leg extended and raised so the bone could mend, cutting deaths from leg wounds. It is still used today.
True or false? The main obstacle to successful transplant surgery was the patient's immune system rejecting the new organ.
True. Transplants only became routinely successful once immunosuppressant drugs were used to prevent rejection.
Who was Archibald McIndoe?
A New Zealand-born plastic surgeon, a cousin of Gillies, who treated badly burned RAF airmen at East Grinstead in the Second World War, using skin grafts and penicillin; his patients formed the Guinea Pig Club.
What was the first whole organ to be transplanted successfully, and when?
A kidney, in the USA in 1954; the first in Britain was in 1960.