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Original research
Blind alleys and dead ends: researching innovation in late 20th century surgery
  1. Harriet Palfreyman1,
  2. Roger L Kneebone2
  1. 1 Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
  2. 2 Imperial College Centre for Engagement and Simulation Science, Imperial College London, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Harriet Palfreyman, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK; harriet.palfreyman{at}manchester.ac.uk

Abstract

This article examines the fortunes of one particular surgical innovation in the treatment of gallstones in the late 20th century; the percutaneous cholecystolithotomy (PCCL). This was an experimental procedure which was trialled and developed in the early days of minimally invasive surgery and one which fairly rapidly fell out of favour. Using diverse research methods from textual analysis to oral history to re-enactment, the authors explore the rise and fall of the PCCL demonstrating that such apparent failures are as crucial a part of innovation histories as the triumphs and have much light to shed on the development of surgery more generally.

  • history
  • surgery
  • performance

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2016-011176

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors Both authors contributed equally.

    • Funding Wellcome Trust WSSS_P42708.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.