His surgical technique feeds those who can’t eat
Stanley J. Dudrick, whose research into hospital nutrition transformed modern surgery, died Jan. 18 in New Hampshire at 84.
Over a half- century in medicine, he taught tens of thousands of medical students and chaired numerous surgery departments.
But he was best known for developing the feeding method known as total parenteral nutrition ( TPN), in which patients obtain their nutrients — proteins, carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins — through a vein near the heart.
The technique, also known as intravenous hyperalimentation, bypasses the gut and has proved indispensable to newborns and adults suffering severe burns or chronic bowel disorders. “I think it was one of the most dramatic advances in medicine ever,” said Walter Longo, chief of colon and rectal surgery at Yale School of Medicine. “I’m very surprised he didn’t win the Nobel Prize.”
Dudrick’s invention was all the more remarkable given that it came at the outset of his career. Raised in a coal- mining family, he had turned toward medicine at age seven, after a doctor cured his mother’s life- threatening fever. He graduated in 1961 from University of Pennsylvania’s medical school with top marks.
During one trying weekend that year, he lost three patients and nearly abandoned surgery altogether.
“In addition to my feeling inadequate personally,” he said in 2012, “I got to thinking there’s something deficient in the way we take care of seriously ill or injured patients surgically. You could do great operations, but many patients still died.”
After five years of work, Dudrick found a way to feed beagle puppies entirely by vein, resulting in six grown dogs — including a beloved pup known as Stinky — comparable in size to those fed normally.
In 1968 he used TPN to support a human baby with a fatal bowel deformity.
TPN cut the mortality rate in post-surgical cases to nearly five per cent — from as high as 60 per cent. The American College of Surgeons said in 2015 his technique “saved well over 10 million patients.”
Dudrick never patented his technique or sought to make money from it.
Survivors include his wife of 61 years, Theresa Keen; six children; 16 grandchildren; and five great- grandchildren.