Tribute to H. L. Obwegeser

Hugo Lorenz Obwegeser was born in Hohenems, Austria in 1920.

He qualified in medicine in Innsbruck in 1945. After training in general surgery and internal medicine, he studied pathology in Vienna under Professor Herman von Chiari for two years before entering maxillo-facial higher specialist training in Graz under Professor Richard Trauner. He received his dental degree in 1949. He was given the opportunity to assist Sir Harold Gillies for one year in the United Kingdom at the time of tremendous developments in plastic surgery, and Professor Eduard Schmid in Stuttgart, where he acquired the ability and acumen for the development of innovative hard and soft tissue reconstructive techniques.

An amazing story was about to unfold when he was appointed to the austere and fiercely traditional University of Zürich in 1954. The publication of successive papers, each breaking new ground, established him as an innovator and within four years he was granted a senior academic position leading to a personal chair in 1962. Certainly the single most impressive procedure he introduced to the surgical world is the bilateral sagittal ramus osteotomy, the venerable “sagittal split”, the single most commonly used procedure in orthognathic surgery today, published in 1955 and 1957.

After meeting a leading surgeon in the US Army, he presented in 1965 a three-day invitational lecture series at the Walter Reed Hospital and shared the European philosophy of advanced maxillo-facial surgical techniques with his American colleagues.

In the sixties he taught the profession the exciting facial benefits achieved by maxillary surgery (Le Fort I to III, segmental and in combination with mandibular osteotomies), and he stressed the need for robust team work with the specialty of orthodontics.

Professor Obwegeser also focused on concepts of intraoral reconstruction in general. He described the comprehensive reconstruction of the severely atrophic maxillary and mandibular alveolar ridges with split rib grafting. He introduced and popularised the concept of intraoral excision of large maxillary and mandibular tumours or segments of necrotic bone with immediate obliteration of the resulting defects using hard and/or soft tissue grafts. He demonstrated that most fractures could be managed intraorally, but on the other hand strongly emphasized the importance of incision camouflage in all cutaneous approaches to the face and the jaws.

Professor Obwegeser always ensured that his trainees had the widest exposure to modern evolving techniques, including those of his long-time friend and collaborator, Dr Paul Tessier in Paris.

In 1970, he was the prime force in bringing the scattered voices of the European speciality together and founding the European Association of Maxillo-Facial Surgeons (now the European Association for Cranio-Maxillo-Facial Surgery) as well as the Journal of Maxillo-Facial Surgery, which he led as its first editor-in-chief.

Hugo Obwegeser received numerous honours: in 1985 the Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Detroit, in 1994 the Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ferrara, Italy and in 2002 the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The First World Conference of the American College of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons was dedicated to Hugo Obwegeser.

The influence of Hugo Obwegeser over half of a century is at the origin of the monumental increase of the number of patients treated across the vista of cleft and major cranio-maxillo-facial deformity. It remains vivid today in the surgical approaches and reconstructive concepts applied to the cranio-facial skeleton.

The European Association shows respect to its founder by honouring him at the XX EACMFS Congress, in the year of his 90^th birthday.

Foundation Meeting of EAMFS (in 1986 renamed EACMFS) on March 14, 1970 in Zurich:

From left to right:
Jacques Dautrey (Nancy)
J. Toman (Prague)
Mogens Glahn Randers (Aarhus)
Guiseppe Rossi (Venice)
Franc Celesnik (Ljubljana)
Alfred Rehrmann (Düsseldorf)
Hugo Obwegeser (Zürich)
Wolfgang Koberg (Aachen)