Word: wangensteen
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Controversy over both the value and safety of stomach freezing as a treatment of duodenal ulcers has been growing ever since a research team working under Surgery Professor Owen H. Wangensteen at the University of Minnesota Hospitals reported the first promising results (TIME, May 18, 1962). Freezing the stomach wall for a short time, Dr. Wangensteen explained, knocks out much of its capacity for producing hydrochloric acid, thus reducing the amount of the corrosive juice that flows into the duodenum, the next chamber down the digestive tract. If acid production should bounce back, he said, the stomach could safely...
Bland Tradition. Now Professor Claude R. Hitchcock, a member of Dr. Wangensteen's own surgery faculty, reports that the Wangensteen treatment is not much good. At best, says Dr. Hitchcock in the Journal of the A.M.A., it is no better than traditional medical management of duodenal ulcers-meaning antacid pills and a bland diet...
Sticking close to the original Wangensteen cooling method of pumping alcohol, at a temperature near zero Fahrenheit, into a stomach balloon, Dr. Hitchcock and his team treated 173 patients, 172 of whom have now been followed for 18 months (one was killed in an auto accident). They report that 50 have minimal ulcer pain remaining, and 13 have none-a satisfactory result rate of only 37%. No fewer than 71 of the patients still suffer pain, 37 more eventually had to have part of their stomachs removed, and one died from a gastric-ulcer perforation...
...technique; he now uses only a single row of stitches to close the slit in the pylorus, reducing the risk of a later shutdown. Other surgeons are combining the Weinberg method with the tying-off of blood vessels, especially for bleeding ulcers. Minnesota's Surgeon Owen H. Wangensteen is trying to make fellow surgeons abandon the knife for nearly all ulcer patients and freeze the stomach instead, a procedure that is hotly debated (TIME...
Some Risks. Surgeon Wangensteen tried hard not to engage in polemics when he rose to answer his critics, but he was in no mood to pull punches. "Admittedly," he said, "the procedure has some risks," but he insisted that they are less than the risks of gastrectomy and similar operations to which ulcer patients might otherwise be subjected. True, even on his own service at the University of Minnesota hospitals, two patients have had perforated gastric ulcers after freezing, and a few have needed transfusions to tide them over temporary bleeding. But all told, 1,200 patients in three carefully...