Abstract
Emil Theodor Kocher was born in 1841 in Bern, Switzerland. He served as full professor of surgery at the University Clinic, Inselspital, in Bern, where he started at age 31 years and served continuously on faculty until his death in 1917. His exceptional career and numerous discoveries helped most surgical specialties to significantly advance their field. However, his most glowing scientific achievements were made in thyroid physiology, pathology, and surgery; for all of these, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1909. His series of more than 5000 thyroid surgeries with a mortality rate of only 0.5 % in 1912 was groundbreaking. He was perhaps one of the earliest “high-volume” endocrine surgeons, and the first surgeon who demonstrated that with increasing experience, patient outcomes are optimized. His epidemiological findings on goiter prevalence and the relationship of goiter with iodine deficiency have daily relevance even now, as seen with iodine-supplemented salt.
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Acknowledgments
Daniel Candinas, MD FRCS, Chair of the Department of Surgery, University Clinic of Bern, Inselspital, Switzerland.
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Worni, M., Sosa, J. (2015). Emil Theodor Kocher. In: Pasieka, J., Lee, J. (eds) Surgical Endocrinopathies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13662-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13662-2_2
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