The First 40 Years of Gastrojejunostomy: From Billroth to Murphy to Mayo

In the early era of therapeutic laparotomy, surgeons developed operations where the extirpation of pathology only required simple ligation of blood supply, detachment of diseased organs or drainage of infection. In 1881, when sutured anastomosis was in its infancy, a surgeon at Billroth’s clinic in Vienna, Anton Wolfler, performed the first successful gastrojejunostomy to treat gastric outlet obstruction. The patient was a 38-year-old male who presented weak and emaciated with an obstructing stomach cancer. After Dr Wolfler’s sutured gastrojejunostomy, the patient recovered without complication and was able to eat by mouth. Over the next 40 years, surgeons around the world explored variations in the technique of this operation until it was used in common practice for the management of gastric outlet obstruction. During that same era, gastrojejunostomy severed as a testing ground for sutured anastomosis, which became the accepted method of enteric anastomosis. This article will review the early history of gastrojejunostomy, its origination and the European and American innovators who created modifications of this life-saving operation. The importance that gastrojejunostomy had in the evolution of sutured enteric anastomosis will be highlighted.