Caprio and Merola: Latin American Contribution to the Development of Liver Surgery

Abstract

Regarding the history of liver surgery, Latin American pioneers have only occasionally been mentioned in the 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 Merola in reports dating back to 1916 and 1920, which revealed well-grounded disagreements with the most renowned anatomists of the time. This paper discusses Merola and Caprio’s academic profile 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 20 years later.