Hand surgery in Israel

Abstract

In the early 1960s, several members of the Israeli Orthopedic Society and the Israeli Plastic Surgery Society developed a special interest in hand surgery. Professor Isidor Kessler was the first to switch from general orthopaedics to hand surgery as his primary and then sole specialization. He was trained by Joseph Boyes and colleagues in California, where he was active mainly in the development of the Niebauer prostheses. He went on to become internationally renowned for his innovative studies on tendon repair and finger lengthening (Kessler, 1973). Upon his return to Israel, he started the first hand surgery service at the Kaplan Medical Center in Rehovot. In 1967, after the Six Day War, many upper limb injuries needed efficient and professional care. The War of Attrition (1968–1970) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) that followed left more than 10,000 injured, about a third of whom had upper limb injuries. To deal with the injured, the Ministry of Health founded five medical units dedicated to hand surgery. In 1975, the first international hand surgery conference was held in Tel Aviv with the participation of the American Association for Surgery of the Hand and other societies.