Willem Johan Kolff

Willem Johan Kolff ( born February 14, 1911 in Leiden, South Holland, † February 11, 2009 in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania) was a Dutch Internist. He was known for the invention of an artificial kidney and his lifelong work on artificial organs. A 1945 treated him woman with acute renal failure is considered the first rescued by dialysis patient.

Life

Willem Kolff was born in Leiden, where his father was a doctor. When he took over the management of a sanatorium for tuberculosis patients, Willem moved with six years of Beekbergen.

Kolff studied medicine from 1930 to 1937 in Leiden. In 1937 he married Janke Huidekoper, from the marriage went five children were born. From 1937 to 1940 Kolff was an assistant at the medical clinic of the University of Groningen. In 1941, he was Chief Internist at the city hospital in Kampen, because - according to own data - did not want to work in a Nazi hospital director on. Since May 1940, the Netherlands was occupied by the German Wehrmacht. Kolff in 1946 received his doctorate in Groningen with a treatise on " De kunstmatige Nier ". In 1950 he emigrated to the United States. This was due to difficulties in obtaining a desired academic position in the Netherlands, but also the threat in his view, " Red Scare " and the skepticism about a country's future after loss of its colonial empire.

From 1950 to 1967 Kolff worked in Cleveland at the Cleveland Clinical Foundation, from 1967 in Salt Lake City. He received several professorial title and numerous honors. His marriage ended in divorce in older age. Kolff died - until his early 90s, still remarkably vital - in the 98th year of life.

Scientific performance

Kolff led, inspired by the witnessed death of the patient due to uremia, in which biochemist Brinkman in Groningen 1938-1940 laboratory by dialysis, so with urea solution in cellophane. The young assistant was taught by Brinkman both these suitable as a dialysis membrane "Art sausage skin " know, and already a Trommeldialysator. Animal testing has not been performed Kolff. From the literature at that time were already known: hemodialysis in animals by John Abel 1912/1913, by Heinrich Necheless 1923 and Georg Haas 1915/1923/1924, hemodialysis in humans by Georg Haas from 1924 to 1928 and the use of heparin for anticoagulation during dialysis by Haas and animal dialysis with cellophane by Thalheimer.

During his time as Chief Internist in Kampen Kolff was 1942 the engineer and owner of an enamel factory, Hendrik Berk, build an " artificial kidney " according to his ideas. It was an aluminum (later wood) made ​​, horizontally rotating in a Spüllösungsbad, wrapped in cellophane drum. In use, the patient whose heparinized blood was passed through the tube with the semipermeable membrane. The membrane surface area was 2.4 m, only a part of it dipped each one in the rinse solution and was so effective. It was a technically very imperfect device for hemodialysis. A major disadvantage of artificial kidney by Kolff was that you thus remove any excess tissue fluid and thus pulmonary edema and hypertension could not handle. This indispensable necessary ultrafiltration allowed developed by Nils Alwall in Lund from 1946 dialysis machine.

Kolff continued his device ( a patient from February 1943, he did not count with ) as of March 1943, 16 patients with acute and chronic renal failure and also a poisoning. 15 of them died. Kolff published together with Berk on the " artificial kidney with a large surface " in 1943 two Dutch magazines, get it to him in 1944 even publications in Sweden ( in English) and in France. Kolff had a very skeptical colleagues at the hospital, the surgeon Kehr, who spoke of "Kidney gimmick". After ending due to rupture of the blood- filled tube " fiasco " demonstration treatment to colleagues and personalities of the city in July 1944 Kolff led first by any additional dialyses more things connected securely but also with the war circumstances in the German occupied Netherlands.

In early September 1945, the 67 - year-old female sheep Sophia city from a Dutch internment with acute renal failure was admitted with a " neglected biliary tract infection " in the hospital. It was dialyzed in Coma uraemicum of Kolff more than 11 hours with the drum kidney and gained her consciousness after this not uncomplicated one-time treatment. She was later released with normal renal function. Sophia sheep city is considered the first rescued by dialysis treatment man. Kolff kept the grateful woman to Christmas in his department: "I can not afford that she still dies in the camp." She was then discharged home and lived until 1952.

Kolff 1946 defended his thesis in Groningen " De kunstmatige Nier ", in which he described the dialysis of the first 15 patients, an annex of Sophia sheep city, as well as the technique of rotating drum kidney. Introduction, he thanked the builder Hendrik Berk and his technical "Kidney Wizard " Noordwijk.

Kolff dialyzed until 1947 a further eight patients, two of whom survived. He could not convince in the Netherlands ( and Europe) with his drum kidney. On the basis of a blueprint of Kolff and Berk the unit at the Peter Brigham Hospital has been thoroughly revised and further developed in Boston and has been clinically used.

Kolffs interest now was the heart-lung machine and other artificial organs, on which he worked after his emigration to the United States. But he has the 1956 with Bruno Watschinger from Linz - yet developed the twin-coil kidney " twin coil" as first commercial dialyzer for single use and those used in 1967 in Washing Machines from Maytag and even in excess nosecones NASA as " artificial kidney ".

Tributes

Kolff was awarded the 1966 Gairdner Foundation International Award and the 1986 Japan Prize. On the list Grootste De Nederlander he won in 2004 for TV tuning the 47th place on 15 November 2005, he was voted " most Overijssel of all time". In the province of Overijssel Kampen is where Kolff made ​​his invention. He is an honorary citizen of Kampen. Before the Art Nouveau hospital in Kampen him a monument was set. 2002 Albert Lasker Award was given to Kolff for Clinical Medical Research, he also received 13 honorary doctorates. A " Kolff Prize" has been awarded since 1998 and conducted annually since 2003 an international symposium on artificial organs in his honor. There is a " Willem Kolff Stichting " (Foundation).