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After immigrating to the United States from Russia in the wake of the First World War, Anatole Kolodny became the first surgeon in Iowa to specialize in neurological surgery. Kolodny was vital to the initial practice of neurosurgery in the state of Iowa and to the specific development of academic neurosurgery at the University of Iowa. In an effort to improve his surgical outcomes, Kolodny invented a hemostat that bears his name and is still used for cranial hemostasis. He also provided early outcomes of myelomenigocele repair and wrote extensively on bone sarcoma. Kolodny's achievements brought favorable attention to the university and altered the course of neurosurgery at the University of Iowa. Of significant importance, Kolodny influenced and trained Iowa's second neurosurgeon, Olan Hyndman, and this action led the way to the eventual recruitment of the university's first division head of neurosurgery. The purpose of this manuscript is to shed light on Kolodny's important contributions to the development of neurosurgery not only at Iowa, but also in the profession as a whole.

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This is the last of five manuscripts reviewing the historical origins of some of the more commonly used surgical instruments and takes "time out" to remind current surgeons about the surgical pioneers on whose shoulders they now stand and whose inventions they now use.

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Since the first attempts at resecting parts of diseased livers in the late nineteenth century, hemorrhage has been the main obstacle for surgeons. One of the first hemostasis techniques in liver resection was liver suture. The idea of suturing the liver in order to perform resection was proposed by a team of Russian and Polish surgeons from Kharkiv University in today's Ukraine. The liver suture became widely popular and has been used in various forms throughout the surgical world. Further into the twentieth century, it has lost much of its popularity; however, over more than 100 years of existence it has seen several peaks in interest. Currently, it is still being used by some liver surgeons as it is one of the cheapest ways of obtaining a bloodless liver parenchyma transection.

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This Historian's Address, presented at the North Pacific Surgical Association 2012 meeting, held in Spokane, Washington, on November 9, 2012, briefly reviews the life and surgical contributions of the inventor William T. Bovie and his collaboration with Dr Harvey Cushing, which led to the widespread acceptance of surgical electrocautery for dissection and hemostasis.

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Intraoperative control of bleeding during any surgical procedure is vital for achieving a positive patient outcome. Hemostasis can be achieved through practical and effective systemic or topical approaches. A variety of hemostatic methods can be employed, ranging from simple manual pressure application with one finger to electrical tissue cauterization, systemic administration of blood products, and systemic administration or topical application of procoagulation agents. The key to surgical success is critically dependent on knowledgeable use of a method appropriate for the level of bleeding experienced by the patient. Topical agents can be effective as adjuncts to aid in hemostasis when bleeding is not controllable with pressure application, vessel ligation, or electrocautery. Such adjunctive hemostatic treatments include topical gelatins, collagens, oxidized celluloses, thrombin and fibrin sealants, synthetic glues, and glutaraldehyde-based glues. As with the use of systemically delivered hemostatic agents, topical treatments also carry risks with their use, and their efficacy has not been extensively studied in large randomized, placebo-controlled prospective studies. The effective use of topical agents is highly dependent on the surgeon's experience or preference and their availability in the surgical setting. In this article, we review the currently available topical hemostatic agents, compare their efficacy, and give general recommendations for their use in the operating room.

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Thrombin is a common hemostatic drug used in surgical practice for over 100 years because of its simplicity and efficacy. Thrombin converts fibrinogen to fibrin, activates platelets, and induces vascular contraction. It is available in multiple forms, including human thrombin, bovine thrombin, and, most recently, human recombinant thrombin. Over 100 case reports of adverse reactions to bovine thrombin include hemorrhage, thrombosis, and substantial immune reaction when used on cardiovascular surgery patients. Approximately 30% of patients exposed to bovine thrombin develop cross-reacting antibodies. Thirty percent of patients with anticlotting factor antibodies develop abnormal coagulation that can be detected by prothrombin time, partial thromboplastin time, or thrombin time, which makes anticoagulation monitoring difficult. Patients with multiple elevated antibodies prior to surgery are also more likely to sustain adverse events. Animal studies confirm these immunological responses seen in humans. With the available clinical and laboratory data, a less immunogenic yet biologically effective thrombin should be available for use in our surgical patients.

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OBJECT: Writers of neurosurgical history have traditionally maintained that the initial use of cranial bone wax for hemostasis in humans was developed and promoted by Sir Victor Horsley, the father of British neurosurgery. A thorough literature review, however, suggests that the use of bone wax for cranial bone hemostasis had its roots more than 50 years before Dr. Horsley's description in 1892. In this study the authors review the sources addressing this issue and establish due credit to the surgeons using bone wax for cranial bone hemostasis before Horsley. METHODS: Primary and secondary general surgery and neurosurgery literature from 1850 to the present was comprehensively reviewed. The key words used in the literature searchers were "bone wax," "sealing wax," "cranial surgery," "Victor Horsley," "hemostasis," and "bone hemostasis." RESULTS: Although Dr. Horsley's description in 1892 clearly delineates the necessary formula for creating a soft, malleable, nonbrittle wax that would easily promote hemostasis, the literature suggests that sealing wax was commonly used as early as 1850 for hemostasis in cranial bones. Even though there is documentation that Magendie (1783-1855) used wax to occlude venous sinuses in animals, detailed documentation of the constituents are not available. Evidence reveals that surgeons like Henri Ferdinand Dolbeau (1840-1877), professor of external pathology and the surgical clinic (1868-1872) at the Paris hospitals, used bone wax in 1864 for the extirpation of a frontal osteoma/exostoses of the frontal sinus. CONCLUSIONS: The use of bone wax in cranial surgery was described by Henri Ferdinand Dolbeau, 50 years prior to Sir Victor Horsley's report in 1892. Nonetheless, it was Horsley who advocated and popularized its use in neurological surgery as an additional tool in the hemostatic and surgical armamentarium.

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Together with Sir William Macewen (1848-1924) and Sir Victor Horsley (1857-1916), Harvey Cushing (1869-1939) is recognised as one of the triumvirate of founders of the speciality of neuosurgery.

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Anyone who has seen a skull bone flap being turned or the sternum being divided at a median sternotomy will be well aware of the considerable bleeding that can occur in these procedures from the highly vascular red bone marrow inside these structures. They will also, no doubt, have seen the surgeon stem the bleeding by smearing wax--Horsley's bone wax--over the cut surfaces of the bone.

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Bipolar coagulation heralded an age of improved hemostasis for microneurosurgery. This, coupled with an improved understanding of microsurgical anatomy, has allowed access to areas of the brain once considered inaccessible. In this review, we trace the history of bipolar coagulation.

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This is the first of a six-part biographical series tracing the lives of the people behind some of today's most commonly used surgical instruments. Surely the most recognisable 'name behind the instrument' must be that of Sir Thomas Spencer Wells (1818-1897), whose ratchet haemostatic forceps represented a simple but important advance in surgical instrument technology.

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Tonsil surgery has been described for over 3000 years. Haemorrhage following tonsillectomy remains the most serious complication of surgery. Over recent years several audits have been gathering data on current trends in tonsil surgery and clinical outcomes throughout England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The results support a return to traditional dissection with ties to reduce the risk of post-operative haemorrhage. We describe the changes that have occurred to improve efficacy and safety during the evolution of the modern tonsillectomy.

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Haemostasis is an essential act in surgical procedures. Technical, physical and chemical devices' improvement in haemostasis is joined to the historical evolution of surgery. In ancient times haemostasis had also a magic and religious value. Simple but effective manoeuvres developed by medicine-men and barber-surgeons are used to control bleeding. Often their original intuitions anticipated scientific discoveries. Ancient haemostatic instruments and the way to use them represent the heritage of old and famous surgeons; some of these procedures are still used in operating rooms.

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One of the chief objects of concern in intracranial surgery should be the avoidance of any unnecessary loss of blood, for at best, in many cases of brain tumor associated with venous stasis, bleeding is likely to be so excessive as to necessitate postponement of the final steps of the procedure until a second or even a third session. The common methods of blood stilling by sponge, clamp, and ligature are largely inapplicable to intracranial surgery, particularly in the presence of bleeding from the nervous tissues themselves, and any device which serves as an aid to hemostasis in these difficult operations will bring a number of them to a safe termination at a single sitting, with less loss of blood and less damage to the brain itself. In addition to the more familiar tourniquet for the scalp, and wax for diploetic and emissary bleeding, suggestions are offered as to the use of gauze pledgets, dry sterile cotton, fragments of raw muscle and other tissues, as well as sections of organizing blood-clots for superficial meningeal bleeding, and silver "clips" for inaccessible individual points ether in dura or brain. The successful consummation of any critical operation often depends upon seeming trifles. It is, however, the scrupulous observance of surgical minutiae that makes possible the safe conduct of major intracranial performances--performances which a few years ago were attended in most cases by a veritable dance Macaber.

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