Dr Kurt Semm Laparoscopy Surgeon Soviet POW Hand Signed Letter

PFAS80  This is a superb opportunity to secure this vintage hand signed for Dr Kurt Semm who was a German gynecologist and pioneer in minimally invasive surgery. He has been called "the father of modern laparoscopy". He has personally hand signed the letter from 1981 and on his official headed paper for the ultimate in lifetime COA. Has two folds where posted and small tear to upper border - small handling - graded good plus to vg minus.

Semm was born to Margarete and Karl Semm in Munich where he attended the Realgymnasium. At the end of World War II he was drafted for the Wehrmacht at the age of 16 and became briefly a Soviet prisoner of war. Upon his return he worked as a toolmaker, before, in 1946, he was able to begin his medical studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He received his MD degree in 1951.

When Semm introduced laparoscopic surgery at the University of Kiel, he had to undergo a brain scan at the request of coworkers as only a person with brain damage would perform such laparoscopic surgery. During the 1970s Semm pioneered numerous gynecologic laparoscopic operations so that the end of the decade he had performed myomectomies, ovariectomies, ovarian cysts resections, removals of tubal pregnancy, and others

On 13 September 1980 Semm performed the first laparoscopic appendectomy opening up the path for a much wider application of minimally invasive surgery.t Semm was tireless in advocating his techniques and gradually got some surgeons interested. In 1985 Erich Mühe showed that Semms laparoscopic approach could be applied for cholecystectomy,  and it became the gold standard within a decade and remains so. Semm produced over 700 publications and spoke at over 1,300 national or international meetings and conventions. He made over 1,000 improvements to instruments.