René Leriche

LERICHE, René (born 1879), a well-known French surgeon. He graduated from the medical faculty and worked in Lyon, where he taught a course in experimental surgery.

Since 1924, Leriche has been a professor at the surgical clinic of the University of Strasbourg. Leriche is a student of the well-known Lyon surgeon Poncet. From the very beginning of his career, Leriche became interested in the bone and vascular systems.

A distinctive feature of Leriche's scientific work was that, in his writings, he primarily relied on data from normal and pathological physiology, whereas almost all French surgeons relied on anatomical material.

Based on his experimental research, Leriche developed his own system of surgery, which he himself defines as the "surgery of pain, vasomotor reactions, trophic disorders, and muscle tone." Leriche proposed a whole series of new operations bearing his name: resection, or "avulsion" of the auriculotemporal nerve (n. auriculo-tempor.), periarterial sympathectomy (resection of the sympathetic nerve fibers enveloping the arteries), resection of the connecting branches of the cervical and lumbar plexuses (rami communicantes), and arteriectomy. Leriche also studied and implemented the surgery of the sympathetic nervous system. On the basis of his clinical and experimental work, Leriche developed a special theory of vasomotor nerves and also expressed a number of very original views regarding the functions of the sympathetic nerve. In addition, he proposed a new theory of bone formation (osteogenesis).

Leriche is one of the most original modern surgical clinicians and theorists. In the social sphere, it should be noted that he has sympathies for the USSR, which is a rarity among the French professoriate. Leriche's most important works: "Des resections de l'estomac pour cancer" (Lyon, 1906); "Traitement des fractures" (Paris, 1917); "Les problemes de la physiologie normale et pathologique de l'os" (together with A. Policard, Paris, 1926); "Traite de therapeutique chirurgicale" (together with P. Lecene, vol. I–II, Paris, 1926); "Physiologie pathologique chirurgicale" (together with A. Policard, Paris, 1930).