T
Trendelenberg sign
- For varicose veins — patient lies on his back and raises his leg to
empty the veins. A tourniquet is applied just below the saphenous
opening. The patient is then stood up — if the veins fill rapidly with
the tourniquet in situ, there are incompetent communicating valves. If
on release the veins fill rapidly from above it is due to incompetent
sapheno-femoral valves
- For congenital dislocations of the hip. If the child stands on the
leg of the affected side, the pelvis tilts downwards towards the sound
side and the buttock sags down, normally the pelvis tilts upward and the
buttock therefore rises. In addition to congenital dislocation of the
hip, this sign may be seen in late Perthe's disease, infantile paralysis
of the gluteal muscles, old fractures of the neck of the femur and
advanced osteoarthritis.
- F Trendelenburg (1844-1924) German surgeon, Professor of Surgery in
Leipzig. He was born in Berlin and studied in Glasgow and Berlin,
graduating in Berlin in 1866. He was an innovative surgeon and initially
was assistant to Langenbeck. It was during this time that he worked on
stricture of the trachea and went to Rostock as Professor of Surgery in
1875. Here he introduced gastrostomy in the treatment of oesophageal
stricture and was the first surgeon to suture the patella in 1878. He
used his position for operating on viscera in 1881. In 1882 he was
appointed Professor of Surgery at Bonn and afterwards went to Leipzig in
1895, where he remained until his retirement in 1911. He introduced an
operation for varicose veins and made an attempt at surgical removal of
a thrombosis in a patient with pulmonary embolism in 1908. He
lived to see his pupil, Kirschner, perform the first successful
embolectomy in 1924. He was founder of the German Surgical Society in
1872, and was greatly interested in surgical history, writing an account
of ancient Indian surgery as well as an autobiography. He died from a
carcinoma of the mandible.
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