From the Surgical Clinic Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany

At the end of his remarkable career,Whipple” could look back on a personal series of 37 pancreatoduodenectomies, a surgical procedure that has carried his name ever since,? although it had first been performed 26 years earlier by Kausch“® in Berlin. As for the results of this surgery, Whipple”” said that “the considerable risk (i.e., operative mortality) of 30%-35% is justified if they (the patients) can be made comfortable for even a year or two.” That was more than 50 years ago.
When the author retired from active clinical surgery in May 1998, the Mannheim Surgical Clinic could look back on 642 pancreatoduodenectomies performed over 26years (Table 1).