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Kurt Semm

Kurt Semm
Born (1927-03-27)March 27, 1927
Munich, Germany
Died July 16, 2003(2003-07-16) (aged 76)
Tucson, Arizona, U.S.
Nationality German
Education Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (M.D., 1951)
Occupation Gynecologist

Kurt Karl Stephan Semm (March 23, 1927 in Munich, Germany - July 16, 2003 in Tucson, Arizona) was a German gynecologist and pioneer in minimally invasive surgery. He has been called "the father of modern laparoscopy".

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 and worked at the II. Universitäts-Frauenklinik München. After his habilitation in 1958 he worked at the Frauenklinik Lindenstrasse. In 1964 the University named him Professor and he returned to the II. Universitäts-Frauenklinik. In 1970 Semm was named Director of the Gynecologic Services of the University of Kiel. Semm retired in 1995 and moved to Tucson, Arizona. He died from complications of Parkinson’s disease.

Semm was married twice. His first wife, Roswitha, died in 1986 from breast cancer. In 1994 he married Iseult O’Neill. They have two children.

Richard Fikentscher got Semm interested in the treatment of infertility. In 1957, Fikentscher, Semm and three other physicians founded of the Deutsche Gesellschaft zum Studium der Fertilität und Sterilität, renamed Deutsche Gesellschaft für Reproduktionsmedizin in 1998. In the 1960s Semm started to use laparoscopy – he named it ‘’pelviscopy’’ - for gynecologic indications, initially as a diagnostic tool, but soon realizing that the laparoscopic approach had potential for interventive surgery. His experience as toolmaker let him to found the WISAP medical instrument company in 1959 allowing him to developed numerous instruments among them an automated electronic CO2 insufflator, uterine manipulators, thermocoagulators to stop bleeding, and extra- and intracorporeal endocopic knotting devices to tie off vessels or remove organs.


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