In 1909 Allen Buckner Kanavel (1874-1938), a self-instructed innovator in brain, spine, and peripheral nerve surgery, described the infranasal transsphenoidal approach to the pituitary gland. With his colleague, urologist Victor Lespinasse, Kanavel attempts unsuccessfully to treat hydrocephalus in two infants by coagulating the choroid plexus through a cystoscope introduced into the ventricular system.
Oskar Hirsch described the fully extracranial endonasal transethmoid transsphenoidal approach in 1909. He was the first to describe the surgical entrance to the sella using this exclusively unilateral endonasal route, which he demonstrated on a cadaver. He reports performing this procedure on a live patient in April, 1910, under local anesthesia in stages over 5 weeks. For better exposure, Hirsch consolidated his method with Killian's submucosal window resection of the posterior nasal septum allowing for bilateral access to the sphenoid sinus and sella, and completed a single-stage procedure on a patient in June 1910.
Oskar Hirsch was the first to describe and perform a stepwise surgical approach to the sella using an exclusively extracranial, endonasal, transethmoidal, and transsphenoidal approach. He built upon his mentor Markus Hajek's approaches to the posterior ethmoid cells and sphenoid sinus 1).
Cushing performed his first transsphenoidal operation in 1909 in a patient with acromegaly by using a modified form of the Schloffer method to reach the pituitary gland. He did not find this approach satisfactory and instead favored a modified form of the sublabial-transsphenoidal route described by A. E. Halstead and Theodor Kocher.
The prominent physicians who have practiced in the Inselspital include Emil Theodor Kocher, the 1909 Nobel laureate. He was among the first physicians to describe the traumatic rupture of the IVD in 1896.
As early as 1909 Oppenheim and Krause published 2 case reports on surgery for a herniated lumbar disc 2).
The International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) was founded in 1909
The pedunculopontine nucleus was first described in 1909 by Louis Jacobsohn-Lask, a neuroanatomist born in Bydgoszcz.
Langenbach (1820) first described paranasal sinus mucoceles under the name of hydatids. Roulette (1909) introduced the name mucocele.