Bengt Robertson

Bengt A. Robertson was a Swedish physician and perinatal pathologist. Robertson was primarily known for the development of the synthetic lung surfactant Corusurf which provided relief to very small babies suffering from infant respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). From 1974 to 2000, he was the director of the division for experimental perinatal pathology in the department of women and child Health at the Karolinska Institute.

In 1996, he was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine together with Tetsurō Fujiwara for contributions to the understanding of neonatal medicine.

Life Robertson was born and grew up in Stockholm. As a child, he attended the Södra Latins Gymnasium in the Södermalm area of Stockholm, leaving in 1953. In 1976, he was appointed as visiting professor at the University of Toronto. Two trials followed that used synthetic Dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine surfactant. The surfactant treatment was delivered as a mist via a nebulizer but the trials showed mixed results. Robillard stated it seemed worthy of further investigation. The second study by Jacqueline Chu and her colleagues John Clements, Marshall Klaus and Bill Tooley in Singapore, implied that the underlying cause of RDS was low blood flow instead of a deficiency of surfactant.

In the late 1960s, Bengt started to collaborate with English-Swedish obstetrician Goran Enhörning (1924-2013) at the Karolinska Institute. Enhörning had been researching RDS in the 1960s and had developed a number of clinical surfactants and therapies to treat RDS. Together, Bengt and Enhörning conducted two trials to discover the reasons for the failure of nebulised synthetic surfactant. They described that when natural surfactant was installed directly into the trachea of premature rabbits, normal lung expansion was achieved, and the animals survived. The discovery that the treatment effect was dependent on the surfactant preparation containing natural surfactant proteins and that the surfactant was administered as a bolus dose directly into the trachea; i.e., to be effective the treatment needed to be nebulised directly into the lungs of preterm infants, The trial proved that a natural surfactant "held promise" as a treatment for RDS. In 1983, Robertson was asked by a colleague Rolf Zetterström to help a little girl with RDS. The young child went from suffering cyanosis to turning a rosy colour, indicating successful treatment. Halliday witnessed the highly efficacious Corusurf at work when pre-term twins were treated, who were going blue in the face due to a lack of oxygen and almost immediately after treatment, turned a healthy pink.

Testing Curosurf In the autumn of 1984, Bengt became the leader of a group of neonatologist and surfactant researchers, known as "The Collaborative European Multicenter Study Group", colloquially known as "the Curosurf family", who were formed to test Curosurf in the first large international multicentre clinical trial. Over the next decade, Robertson coordinated the study groups to produce a series of trials to test Curosurf. The first two defined treatment regimens, This was followed by trials to define when optimal treatment should be undertaken. In the following years further trials were held to test Curosurf in combination with continuous positive airway pressure treatment.

Honours Robertson received many honours throughout his life. In 1996, he was first recognised when he was awarded the King Faisal International Prize. In 2002, he was awarded the Erich Saling Maternité Prize given by the European Association of Perinatal Medicine. This was followed in 2004 with the awarding of the Lars Werkö Prize by the Swedish Heart Lung Foundation along with Tore Curstedt.

Societies Robertson was also awarded a number of honorary positions throughout his life: In 1987 Honorary Membership of the Italian Society of Perinatal Medicine In 1996, Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

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