Short History of Microsurgery

Microsurgery is known for its highly refined, highly accurate and atraumatic pertaining techniques.

The term ‘microsurgery’ has come to mean surgery performed upon small structures usually with help of some form of magnificent, in a particular the dissecting microscope.

The otorhinolaryngologists seem to have been about the first to realize the limitation placed upon the human hand by the human eye, lead to the development to more sophisticated microscope, equipment, and techniques.

Early in 1921, Nylen, a Swiss E.N.T surgeon, had succeeded in operating on otosclerosis in the inner ear under the operative microscope.

Next the ophthalmologists evinced interest. Perritt of Chicago used the dissecting microscope for operating on the eye in 1946, Barraquer in 1956, Becker in 1956, Dekking and Troutman followed.

The first surgical microscope with selectable working distance and coaxial illumination was introduced for E.N.T surgery in 1853. It truly pointed out the way to the future.

The triumph of the surgeons also aroused the interest of surgeon from other discipline. By mid 1960s, the microscope was used in intracranial vascular surgery.

Jacobson in 1960 first advocated the use of microsurgery in small blood vessel anastomoses, and over the last thirty years the use of loupes and microscope has mushroomed.

In January, 1966, both the 9th and the 6th Shanghai People’s Hospital’s successfully carried out replantations of severed fingers under a 6x operative magnifying glass.

Today microsurgery is used in areas such as plastic surgery, examples of which would be digit replantations or face reconstruction using free tissue flaps. In gynecology it might be used to reverse female sterilization by fallopian tube anastomoses.
Short History of Microsurgery

Microscope

The origin of microscope can be traced to the ancient world. This was by the evidence of magnifying lenses found in ancient Iraq.

It is also the evidence that craftsmen in Rome used magnifying glass for their fine arts work.

In the first century A.D Seneca described actual magnification by a globe of water. He wrote that letters could be enlarged and made clear by viewing though a globe of glass filled with water.

A thousand years later the Arabian scholar Alhazan wrote a major work on optical principles and described the anatomy of the eye and how the lens focuses images.

The Dutch draper or linen merchant and option Anton van Leeuwenhock (1632 – 1723) ground a single lens with a magnification of about t 500 power in the 1670s.

Leeuwenhock was the first to discover microscopic. His magnifying lenses were small in diameter and had to be held extremely close to the eye and to the specimen.

Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703) made improvements by the 1660s to the device, with which he discovered the cellular structure of plants.

In the 20th century. The electron microscope represented a break through to much higher magnification.
Microscope