Herbert Olivecrona

Herbert Olivecrona ( born July 11, 1891 in Visby, † January 15, 1980 in Stockholm) was a Swedish neurosurgeon, known as a brain surgeon.

Olivecrona, whose family originally immigrated in the 17th century from Finland to Sweden, was the son of Judge Axel Olivecrona and Countess Ebba Morner and went to Uppsala to school. From 1909 he studied medicine at the University of Uppsala, from 1912 at the Karolinska Institute, where he was, as well as at the Pathological Institute of the Municipal Hospitals in Dortmund two years assistant at the Institute of Pathology. In 1918, he graduated and was Assistant to the Surgery of the University Hospital, University of Leipzig, where he turned to brain surgery. In 1919 he became assistant physician at Serafimer Hospital in Stockholm, the University Hospital. In the same year he went for a year with a grant from the American - Swedish Society at the Hunterian Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University. There he learned as an Observer in the clinic of the famous surgeon William Stewart Halsted. From 1920 he was back at Serafimer Hospital in Stockholm, where he was senior physician and a large number of brain tumors operated, as at that time the only surgeon in Sweden. He was supported by the radiologist Erik Lysholm (1891-1947), who developed from the mid-1920s by Olivecrona encouraged new diagnostic techniques for brain surgery ( such as ventriculography, diagnostic neuroradiology for accurate localization of tumors ). Olivecrona 1922 received his doctorate. From 1924 he was an associate and in 1935 a full professor of neurosurgery at the Karolinska Institute, which he remained until 1960. His chair was one of the first such in Europe. In 1929 he spent a month at the Observer English surgeon Harvey Cushing, who was so impressed by Olivecrona during a visit in 1929 in Stockholm, which he in 1931 with 27 other selected surgeons invited him at the International Congress of Neurology in Bern on a private banquet. From 1930 he was chief of neurosurgery at Serafimer Hospital in Stockholm with its own department of 50 beds. His department became a center of attraction of neurosurgeons from around the world who learned with him. In 1960 he went as professor to retire, but still practiced on private.

In 1951, he led the first by hypophysectomy (removal of the pituitary gland surgically difficult to access ). He led the operation several times through as a means to combat serious cancers.

In 1960 he taught at the invitation of the Egyptian Government a neurosurgery in Cairo.

In 1956 he received the first Fedor Krause Medal. He was more honorary doctorates (including Athens, Cologne).

From 1954 he was with William Tönnis ( 1898-1978 ), who was an assistant with seven months Olivecrona, the Handbook of Neurosurgery out. It appeared in several volumes published by Springer until 1974.

He was also the 1941 remake of Fedor Krause 's Special Surgery of brain diseases reissued ( with Berthold Ostertag, Heinrich Schum, Erik Lysholm ).

Writings

• The surgical treatment of brain tumors: a clinical study, Springer Verlag 1927
• With Hilding mountain beach, Wilhelm Tönnis vascular malformations of the brain and Gefässgeschwülste, Leipzig, Thieme 1936