Biography: Ralph Peterli, MD

Abstract

Professor Ralph Peterli grew up in Basel, Switzerland. During his senior year of high school, he was a foreign exchange student and sent to Phoenix, Arizona. As a competition alpine skier not the preferred location for skiing. Professor Peterli quickly learned to appreciate the hospitality of the people and loved the beauty of the American Southwest. Ralph went back to Phoenix every summer break during medical school, of which he graduated in Basel in 1986. Over the years, the University of Basel has had some prominent chairs of surgery: Professor Rudolf Nissen did his first fundoplication in Basel and his successor, Professor Martin Allgöwer was a general surgeon who was one of the founding members of the AO (Association for the Study of Internal Fixation). Ralph did his surgical training in Northwestern Switzerland. From the very beginning, he was interested in research and academics. He became a staff surgeon and later deputy head of a very active visceral surgery unit at St. Clara Hospital in Basel, a University affiliated private non-profit hospital. Since 1997 Professor Peterli has been head of the bariatric unit and teaching at the University of Basel. In 2008 he earned a research fellowship at the University of Lund, Sweden. In Switzerland, visceral surgeons do not subspecialize like they do in other countries. Therefore, Ralph is as much a colorectal surgeon, general surgeon, and surgical oncologist, as he is a bariatric surgeon. From the beginning, Professor Peterli was interested in minimally invasive techniques and robotics. In 2019 the St. Clara Hospital mergedwith theUniversityHospital of Basel to become Clarunis, University Centre for Gastrointestinal and Liver Diseases: an interdisciplinary academic unit in which gastroenterologists and visceral surgeonswork together on the same team. Ralph is currently the deputy head of the visceral surgical department and head of visceral surgery research and the bariatric unit. Ralph was among the pioneers to develop the operative technique of the laparoscopic gastric banding operation including the perioperative management in Switzerland. During the last 25 years, he initiated a number of prospective and retrospective trials aimed at improving therapeutic strategies to surgically treat patients with severe obesity. It was not the number of patients operated on but the high follow-up rate reaching up to 98% at 5 years that gave his work international notoriety. This extremely high follow-up rate is partly due to the health care system in Switzerland paying for outpatient visits but also due to the disciplined nature of the Swiss resulting in high compliance and adherence. Professor Peterli’s team searched for predictors of outcome to better allocate the right patient to the different surgical options. They developed a unique staged therapeutic concept of primary gastric banding followed by biliopancreatic diversion/duodenal switch for the nonresponders to banding. The concept had to be abandoned due to the better overall results seen with the laparoscopic gastric bypass and sleeve gastrectomy as primary bariatric interventions. Ralph always wanted to work on interdisciplinary and inter-professional teams that met at eye level to develop management strategies for preoperative selection and preparation of patients as well as follow-up algorithm. His fellow clinicians and researchers looked into the long-term side effects of bariatric operations on bone metabolism, gastro-oesophageal reflux, dumping, nutritional deficits, and strategies to reduce surgical adverse events. As PI of a Swiss multi-center randomized trial * Ralph Peterli [email protected]