TABLE OF CONTENTS We saw how Alexis Carrel, in 1902, demonstrated a new technique for joining the two parts of severed arteries. He continued to persevere in this extremely exacting field of vascular anastomosis (an artificial connection between two tubular organs) He also performed a number of successful autotransplants (relocation from different parts of the same person) of kidneys, toes and fingers, which required joining together very small blood vessels, and severed nerves and muscles
Later the American surgeon Harry J Buncke began trying to sew together the very small (1 mm) blood vessels in rabbits' ears. His early attempts were not entirely successful, and it was not until he began using a microscope, that he was able to carry out effective toe-to-thumb transplants on monkeys. This was made possible by the use of the delicate instruments and sutures developed in collaboration with engineers from Silicon Valley. These successes led to the founding of the Microsurgical Unit at the Davies Center in San Francisco, where hundreds of microsurgeons have been trained and thousands of human replants and transplants have been performed. Buncke, almost the father of modern microsurgery, edited a monumental book on the subject (5).
Early microsurgical operations relied on the eyesight and the steadiness of the hands of the surgeon. However, it soon became clear that some means of magnifying the image of the site was essential. In 1921, the Swedish surgeon C O Nylen used a single eyepiece microscope to...
