Who did the first known prostate operation?

[Arnon Krongrad, MD]

It seems my "pop quiz" email started some debate. I had listed the following, but it was a trick question. None did the first known prostate operation. Do you know the real answer?

1) Hugh Hampton Young, Baltimore, 1904
2) Giovanni Batista Morgagni, Padua, 1737
3) Musashi , Akita Prefecture, The Year of the Monkey
4) Galen, Rome, 162

[Vivienne Marie Treharne]

According to the Prostate Cancer Research Institute (PCRI): http://www.prostate-cancer.org/education/localdis/brosman_RP2003.html
In 1891, in Tucson, Arizona, a frontier doctor named George Goodfellow performed the first known prostatectomy
According to emedicine:
Simple retropubic prostatectomy dates to 1945, when Terrence Millin first reported his experience with 20 patients.
Eugene Fuller first performed suprapubic prostatectomy in 1894. By 1912, Peter Freyer, who reported his results with 1000 patients, had popularized the procedure.
In the first century CE, surgeons used a semielliptical incision in the perineum for partial removal of the prostate.
http://www.emedicine.com/Med/topic3041.htm
See correspondence: History of prostatectomies, D. Sinclair -in PubMed Central
Br Med J. 1931 July 25; 2(3681): 165. PMCID: PMC2315698
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2315698&b...
In 1928 Harry Harris of Sydney published an account of his new operation "Prostatectomy with complete closure" (J. Coll. Surg. Aust. 1, 65-7, 1928) http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1445-2197.1984.t...

[Arnon Krongrad, MD]

Seems they all forgot about Sushruta. :-)

Still, you are now officially the New Prostate Cancer InfoLink's historian! Well done!

[Ralph Valle]

According to Marília Coutinho's timeline at PSA Rising:

1867: Theodor Billroth performed the first perineal prostatectomy for carcinoma of the prostate

Shelley, Harry S. The Enlarged Prostate. A Brief History of Its Treatment. The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 24 (October 1969), 452-73.

Visit:
http://www.psa-rising.com/timeline/

[Oktay]

I think "prostate operation" includes all prostatic manuplations. So answer must be Galen b/c , first urinary catheter had been used by his self. in addition "Operation" does not mean a bloody stiaution like prostatectomy.

[Arnon Krongrad, MD]

Sushruta was 700 years before Galen. He did a lot of operations, including prostate.

[Mike]

I suppose that what these data really confirm is the arrogance of the so-called "Western" world (and yes, Oktay, I am including Turkyie), in assuming that nearly every significant technological, scientific, and medical advance inevitably occurred somewhere north of latitude 35 N and between longtitudes 40 E and 135 W some time after about 100 B.C.E. Thus consigning over 2000 years of Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Egyptian curiosity and inventiveness to the doghouse!

It's a wonder that anyone survived birth prior to that date! Of course it's all Herodatus's fault!

This is supposed to be a joke. Okay! :O)

[Oktay]

but there is no any choose like "Sushruta" MD Krongrad, isn't it? :)

[Arnon Krongrad, MD]

"It was a trick question. None did the first known prostate operation. Do you know the real answer?"

[Oktay]

no ı don't know, but want to know :)

[Arnon Krongrad, MD]

Sushruta, an Indian surgeon. 600 BC.

[Mike]

Oktay ... see "Radical prostatectomy: a brief historical note" on the main web site.