IBD Surgery at Mount Sinai

Crohn’s disease was first described at Mount Sinai in 1932 by Drs. Crohn, Oppenheimer, and Ginsburg. Subsequently, Mount Sinai became arguably the world center for the treatment of complex gastrointestinal disease. When Dr. Kurtz and I arrived at Mount Sinai as surgical interns in the early 1970s, the first generation of gastroenterologists and surgeons such as Crohn and Garlock were no longer practicing. Surgery in the 1970s was at the cusp of revolutionary advances. This was the beginning of the golden age of gastrointestinal surgery as you can see from the complexity of the cases presented in this Atlas and the successful outcomes. This decade also marked the evolution of the ileoanal pullthrough operation which was initially brough to Mount Sinai by Dr Mark Ravitch and subsequently revived with an initial group of patients with Familial Adenomatous Polyposis and later with Ulcerative Colitis. The cases presented are a compilation of our patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease undergoing surgical treatment. We hope that you will enjoy reading it as much as we did putting this Atlas together.