Orvar Swenson

Orvar Swenson (7 February 1909 – 13 April 2012) was a Swedish-born American pediatric surgeon. He discovered the cause of Hirschsprung's disease and in 1948, with Alexander Bill, performed the first pull-through operation in a child with megacolon, which then became a treatment for the disease.

Initially a resident in pathology, he soon became an assistant professor of pediatric surgery at Harvard and later moved to Boston's Floating Hospital for Children as surgeon-in-chief, where he was the first pediatric surgeon on the staff at the hospital and where he began his research in Hirschsprung's disease. Subsequently, he became surgeon-in-chief of Children's Memorial Hospital, where he remained until his retirement in 1973.

In 1973, Swenson was elected president of the American Pediatric Surgical Association. He authored Swenson's Pediatric Surgery, which ran into five editions and he was the recipient of a number of awards including the E. Mead Johnson Award, the William E. Ladd Medal and the Denis Browne Gold Medal.

Early life Swenson was born in Helsingborg, Sweden, in 1909. His parents, Amanda and Carl Albert Swenson, were missionaries for the Community of Christ and relocated their family to Independence, Missouri, in 1917. The same year, Orvar and Alvin were admitted to Harvard Medical School, where they successfully petitioned the dean to be placed in the same class so that they could share textbooks in order to save money. They graduated from Harvard in 1937.

Career Swenson began his medical career as an intern at Ohio State University. After a year, he returned to Boston to work at Boston Children's Hospital and Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Initially a resident in pathology, he took a residency in surgery from 1939 to 1945,

When Swenson performed the procedure in 1948, it was the first successful surgical correction of megacolon.

This operation, however, became the only procedure that treated Hirschsprung's disease and became known as the "Swenson pull-through". He described the hallmark clinical and radiological markers of Hirschsprung's disease in newborns and showed that the only way to make a definitive diagnosis was to perform a full-thickness rectal biopsy. Swenson subsequently followed his patients for a number of years. Over his career, he traveled to India, Australia, South America, Europe and Canada to demonstrate his procedure.

Other surgical work As well as Hirschsprung's disease, Swenson worked on the treatment of other birth defects. He performed esophageal anastomoses for esophageal atresia and tracheoesophageal fistula, and resection and anastomosis in intestinal atresia. He was among the first to advocate performing a pelvic osteotomy when treating bladder exstrophy and for partial nephrectomy in bilateral Wilms' tumors.

Awards and honors He served as president of the American Pediatric Surgical Association in 1973–1974, and was the author of Swenson's Pediatric Surgery, a textbook that was published in five editions from 1958 to 1990. He received the E. Mead Johnson Award from the Society for Pediatric Research in 1952, the William E. Ladd Medal from the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1959, and the Denis Browne Gold Medal from the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons in 1979.

Personal life Swenson married Melva Elizabeth Criley in 1941; they had three daughters. He died in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2012, aged 103.

Selected publications