The surgeon Benedetto Schiassi and the first spinal anesthesia in Italy (1899)

Abstract

“The surgeon Benedetto Schiassi and the first spinal anesthesia in Italy”. Recent research has allowed us to identify that it was the surgeon Benedetto Schiassi, known for the surgical procedure of vagotomy in the peptic ulcer, who performed the first spinal anesthesia in Italy: on December 27, 1899, at the Umberto and Margherita Hospital in Budrio, his birthplace. Four publications by Schiassi and the documentation in the archive of the Budrio Hospital attest to the execution of the surgical intervention with this anesthesia. It was carried out urgently in a 70-year-old man, suffering from gangrene of the right foot, in order to perform a leg amputation. He describes the clinical status of the patient characterized by diffuse arteriosclerosis, left ventricle dilatation and arrhythmia. His general clinical condition was so compromised that Schiassi considered general anesthesia extremely risky, which at the time was performed with ether or chloroform and was burdened with severe mortality if practiced in critically ill patients. The drug used was cocaine certainly considered the forefather of all local anesthetics. No other documents, scientific research or curricula pertaining to other Italian surgeons of the time have been found in the literature, to whom the execution of a spinal anesthesia could be attributed in a period prior to that performed by Schiassi. We believe it important to reconstruct the authorship of this anesthesia in Italy, underlining Benedetto Schiassi’s innovative vision in understanding the theoretical value and clinical utility of this anesthesiological method, still widely used today, which, on the occasion of its 125th anniversary, deserves to be remembered.