Caprio & Mérola. The Origins of Liver Surgery in Uruguay
Abstract
Regarding the history of liver surgery, Latin American pioneers have only occasionally been mentioned in Anglo-Saxon literature. One of such rare cases was Uruguayan surgeon Gerardo Caprio,
who in 1931 published a report about a resection of the left lobe of the liver. This was done during an uneventful period in the development of ideas on this surgical technique, following the remarkable advances made in the last quarter of the 19th Century. The anatomic and liver manipulation concepts used by Caprio had been developed by Mérola in reports dating back to 1916 and 1920, which revealed well-grounded disagreements with the most renowned anatomists of the time. This paper discusses Mérola and Caprio’s academic profi le by analyzing their publications, the
knowledge base and experience that led the latter to perform such liver resection, and the surgical principles applied to it, which would only be formally adopted worldwide twenty years later.
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