Lars Leksell was a Swedish physician and professor of Neurosurgery at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
18 Facts About Lars Leksell
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Lars Leksell was born in Fassberg Parish, Sweden on 24 November 1907.
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Lars Leksell completed medical studies at the Karolinska Institute and began his neurosurgical training in 1935 under Herbert Olivecrona.
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Lars Leksell became a professor of surgery at University of Lund in 1958.
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Today, Lars Leksell's technique is used as an effective treatment for many conditions such as arteriovenous malformations, pituitary tumors, acoustic neuromas, craniopharyngiomas, meningioma, metastatic and skull base tumors, and primary brain tumors.
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Lars Leksell died peacefully at age of 78 in 1986 while taking a brisk walk in Swiss alps.
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Lars Leksell started his neurosurgical training with Herbert Olivecrona in 1935 at the Serafimer Hospital, one of the oldest hospitals in Sweden founded in 1752.
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In 1947 Lars Leksell visited Wycis in Philadelphia and then developed and described his instrument in a publication in 1949.
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In contrast to the Cartesian coordinate system of the Spiegel-Wycis device, Lars Leksell's frame utilized three polar coordinates.
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Lars Leksell was in many respects a perfectionist and for the rest of his life he continued to change and revise the design of virtually every small part of his instrument though the basic semicircular frame was retained.
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Lars Leksell focused not only on upgrading the function of the instrument but on its aesthetic appearance.
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The first, documented clinical application of Lars Leksell's stereotactic system was a case of a craniopharyngioma cyst that was punctured and treated with injection of radioactive phosphorus.
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Lars Leksell performed pneumoencephalography, first in the sitting and then in the supine position to visualize the anterior and posterior commissures, respectively.
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Beside the passionate interest in the technical aspects of stereotaxy, Lars Leksell was in the 1950s and 1960s very active in the operation theatre.
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Lars Leksell performed a large number of pallidotomies, and later thalamotomies, in Parkinson's disease and capsulotomies in various forms of mental disorders.
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In 1946 Lars Leksell was appointed head of a neurosurgical unit in Lund in southern Sweden where he became professor in 1958 and remained so until 1960.
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Two other examples of Lars Leksell's innovation deserve to be mentioned.
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Lars Leksell was the first to apply ultrasound in neurosurgical diagnosis by the development of echoencephalography as early as 1955.