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Fedor KrauseGerman surgeon, one of the founders of German neurosurgery.
Date of Birth: 10.03.1857
Country:  Germany |
Content:
Biography of Fedor Krause
Fedor Krause was a German surgeon and one of the founders of German neurosurgery. He was born on March 10, 1857, in Friedland (now Korfantów, Poland) in Upper Silesia. He passed away on September 20, 1937, in Bad Gastein.
Early Life and Education
Originally, Fedor Krause studied music at the Berlin Conservatory, but later switched to medicine and enrolled at the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1883, he became an assistant to Richard von Volkmann (1830-1889) at the surgical department of the university hospital in Halle. He later worked as a pathologist at the University of Frankfurt (1890-1892), a surgeon at the hospital in Hamburg (1892-1900), and then as the head of the surgical department at the Augusta Hospital in Berlin. In 1901, he became an associate professor at the University of Berlin. In Berlin, he closely collaborated with the renowned German neurologist Oppenheim (1858-1919). During World War I, he initially served as a consulting surgeon and was later sent to Latin America to teach the basics of neurosurgery.
Scientific Contributions
Krause developed a technique for grafting free skin flaps, known as the Krause flap, in plastic surgery. He was one of the pioneers of surgical treatment for epilepsy. Krause distinguished between two forms of epilepsy - genuine and focal. The treatment for focal epilepsy involved the removal of the epileptic focus. In 1912, he published a study describing the results of surgical treatment in 96 patients with focal epilepsy. One of the notable aspects of his surgeries was the use of electrostimulation. He also attempted brain mapping. It is worth noting that Penfield, who used a similar methodology on patients with epilepsy, later created functional maps of the cerebral cortex. Throughout his career, Krause performed around 400 epilepsy operations. Based on his experience, he developed the principle that "the earlier the surgical treatment for focal epilepsy, the better."
In 1909, F. Krause performed the first removal of a sequestered herniated intervertebral disc. Together with Oppenheim, he published a work describing the course of the operation - transdural removal of a herniated intervertebral disc. In 1893, Krause carried out the first complete extirpation of the Gasserian ganglion through extradural access for the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia. The technique he developed became known as the "Krause operation," and later, after modification by Hartley, as the "Hartley-Krause operation."
Krause made a significant contribution to the development of neurosurgical techniques and approaches to various intracranial formations. In 1898, a patient with complaints of noise in the ear sought his help. This led him to think that the auditory nerve could be severed similarly to the trigeminal nerve. The bone-plastic trepanation of the posterior cranial fossa was performed with the patient in a sitting position. This allowed access to the auditory nerve. The successful removal of a bullet from the roof of the right orbit in 1900 served as a stimulus for transforming the approach to the area of the pituitary gland. Krause proposed numerous technical techniques and instruments. Starting from 1908, he started using suction during brain tumor removal. As early as 1911, he warned of the danger of lumbar puncture in cases of increased intracranial pressure and described the advantages of ventricular drainage in such cases.
Krause made a significant contribution to the development of techniques for the removal of brain and spinal cord tumors. The fact that out of 109 patients operated on for brain tumors in 1907, two-thirds died, and the mortality rate among those who underwent repeat surgery was 21% (data from Krause's "Surgery of the Brain and Spinal Cord" guide) speaks to the novelty and unexplored nature of this problem at the time.
