ANATOMIC AND CLINICAL STUDY OF THE TRANSVERSE ABDOMINAL INCISION

Abstract

The transverse abdominal incision has been used nearly one hundred years. Baudelocque¹ used it prior to 1847 for cesarean sections, but it was Pfannenstiel,² in 1900, who popularized its use in pelvic operations. Maylard³ (1899), of Glasgow, first used a transverse incision in the upper part of the abdomen. In making this incision, he sectioned all layers of the abdominal wall in a transverse plane. An intra-abdominal hemorrhage that occurred after the closure of a median vertical incision led him to employ a transverse incision for the second laparotomy. He subsequently observed that the transverse section healed more quickly and more firmly than the median vertical one, in which a hernia developed. Boeckmann,⁴ of St. Paul, unaware of Maylard's observations, first employed the transverse incision in all types of abdominal operations in 1906. Sprengel⁵ introduced it to the Continental surgeons in 1910 and, in conjunction