D. Emerick Szilagyi, MD, 1910-2009; Editor, 1984-1990
Article Outline
Early morning November 1, 2009 Vascular Surgery lost an original. With the passing of D. Emerick Szilagyi just a few months shy of his 100th birthday our specialty, surgical organizations, professional journals, clinics, operating suites and patients lost a peerless and long-serving leader. The authors along with legions of his professional colleagues, fellows and patients lost a mentor and friend (Fig 1).
Fig 1.
D. Emerick Szilagyi, MD. Courtesy of the Conrad R. Lam Archives, Henry Ford Hospital.
Owing to the sheer number of important contributions he made throughout the broad span of his uniquely productive life, it is neither practical nor possible to mention, let alone catalogue them all in this brief space. We shall simply try to provide a short outline celebrating some of the career highlights of this founding father of Vascular Surgery.
D. Emerick Szilagyi was born June 20, 1910 into a middle-class family in the Austria-Hungarian province of Transylvania. Education was highly valued in the Szilagyi household and young Emerick was an early star. Significant challenges to be overcome in his early years included severe dislocations in Central Europe following the First World War, especially in areas that had sided with Germany and the accidental death of his father when Szilagyi was 13 years old. Always a successful and adventuresome student, for a time he studied at the Sorbonne before returning to his native Hungary and commencing his medical studies at the University of Debrecen. No doubt his strong personal attributes of self-reliance, independence, and tireless effort were forged in these years. These qualities were indispensable to his early achievements and set the course for the following eight decades of success.
In the spring of 1931 in the depths of the Great Depression, Emerick Szilagyi, along with his brother Joseph, made his way from Kolozvar to Cherbourg to board the Leviathan as a passenger for the transatlantic journey to New York. Here, they boarded a train for Detroit to join the rest of their family. Thus began this future Journal of Vascular Surgery editor's 77-year-career in Detroit and its environs. He gained admission to the University of Michigan Medical School in the fall of that year and graduated with honors in 1935. Following a rotating internship, Szilagyi began training in the Pathology Department at Michigan, where he came under the influence of the chair, Dr Vernon Weller, a man he later credited with instilling within him the importance of absolute intellectual honesty. During this period, a previous interest in surgery resurfaced and Szilagyi applied for and was accepted into the surgery residency at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. His chair was Dr Roy D. McClure, one of Dr William S. Halsted's original Johns Hopkins Hospital surgery residents and an early leader of the Henry Ford Hospital. Dr McClure trained Szilagyi in surgery and manifested supreme confidence in him by assigning him after his third year of residency as the lone physician-surgeon in charge of the Ford Motor Company's rubber plantation in Brazil's Amazon valley. During World War II, the smooth operation of this plantation was considered a matter of national security. Szilagyi's two and one-half years of service in this unique position proved formative. As the only trained physician for thousands of miles, he was called on to perform a wide variety of procedures with rudimentary support, and only textbooks and the advice of colleagues back in Detroit for instruction. He enthusiastically and successfully shouldered these responsibilities, where his rigorous work habits, innovative surgical skills, keen powers of observation and meticulous reporting, and ability to make do with limited resources were fully displayed. He returned to Detroit in 1945 as chief surgical resident fully prepared to launch his outstanding career.
Early in his 50-year-association with Henry Ford Hospital, Szilagyi mastered operations on nearly every area of the body. He was best known, however, for his pioneering work in establishing the field of Vascular Surgery. From whatever standpoint – clinician, educator, researcher, writer, editor, or lecturer – he became an international leader. His legendary and extensive documentation of the natural history of vascular diseases and their treatments, underscored by scrupulously honest outcomes reporting, earned him respect and admiration around the world. In the process, he helped set Vascular Surgery on the pathway to a scientifically-sound medical discipline. It is hard to imagine any serious medical specialty without clinical registries, robust scientific meetings, rigorous reporting of outcomes, critical analyses, self examination, board certification, approved training programs, or a premier journal. D. Emerick Szilagyi is one of a very small number of individuals who made unique contributions in each of these foundational areas of our specialty and, hence, one to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude. The vast number of patients he successfully cared for with his own hands or through the hands of those he trained, taught, and inspired is a legacy in itself (Fig. 2). Not to go unrecognized was the critical role he played in holding Henry Ford Hospital together during the late 1960's and early 1970's, a particularly trying time for Detroit and the rest of urban America. A strong adherent of the group practice model, he had the foresight to help initiate the highly successful, vertically integrated, and geographically comprehensive Henry Ford Health System.
Fig 2.
Photograph, circa 1969, taken in the Henry Ford Hospital vascular surgery clinic of D. Emerick Szilagyi, MD (center) flanked by long time colleagues Roger F. Smith, MD (right) and Joseph P. Elliott, Jr. (left). Courtesy of the Conrad R. Lam Archives, Henry Ford Hospital.
In the area of scientific writing, his contributions were monumental. The papers which he considered most important were assembled by him and bound in a reprint journal entitled Henry Ford Hospital Department of Surgery Division II (Vascular) Reprints (1955-1977). Included were classics such as Contribution of Aortic Aneurysmectomy to Prolongation of Life, which rightfully belong in the basic database of our specialty.1 This paper was published in 1966, prior to the advent of modern imaging and treatment methods. Not only did it pre-figure contemporary statistically-based reporting formats, but it also advanced conclusions concerning aortic aneurysm surgery which have stood the test of more than 45 years of advances in vascular surgery – conclusions which remain as durable as their author was! To these earlier classics must be added more recent contributions, including a longitudinal outcome study of 1748 aortoiliac reconstructions patients with 30 year follow-up.2 Earlier this decade, Dr Szilagyi applied his considerable analytical skills to a thoughtful questioning of the healing challenges associated with endograft prostheses.
Emerick Szilagyi's superb organizational and analytical skills were no more evident than in his contributions to this Journal. Along with editors Drs Michael DeBakey and Jesse Thompson, he helped found the Journal of Vascular Surgery which celebrated its 25th year of publication in 2009. For the first six years of the Journal's existence, Dr Szilagyi read every submission and sent early contributors a personal (and often quite lengthy) critique. His last contribution to the literature was his autobiography, which he completed at the age of 98.3
D. Emerick Szilagyi is survived by his two daughters, Martha Szilagyi and Christine Grundy (Leon), many grand and great grandchildren, and former wife Sally Stritch Bolton. He was preceded in death by his dear wife Martha Evelyn “Eve” Szilagyi. He is proudly remembered as a daring surgical innovator, rigorous clinical investigator, educator, and international physician ambassador at Henry Ford Hospital where the The D. Emerick and Eve Szilagyi Chair in Vascular Surgery supports his legacy. Let all concerned with the care of vascular surgery patients everywhere join us in the celebration of his long and productive life, lived so well and to the benefit of so many.
One of us (D.J.R.) had the privilege of being the inaugural chair holder and the other (A.D.S.) is the current chair holder.
References
- . Contribution of abdominal aortic aneurysmectomy to prolongation of life. Ann Surg. 1966;164:678–699
- . A thirty-year survey of the reconstructive surgical treatment of aortoiliac occlusive disease. J Vasc Surg. 1986;3:421–436
- . A Brief Account of the Long Life of D. Emerick Szilagyi, M.D., June 20, 1910-Present. Evanston, IL: Greenwood Academic; 2008;
PII: S0741-5214(09)02470-7
doi:10.1016/j.jvs.2009.12.013
© 2010 Published by Elsevier Inc.
