[Total laryngectomy: from hands of the general surgeon to the otolaryngologist].

In Europe early attempts at the total laryngectomy were performed in humans in the late 1800s by some Anglo-Saxon general surgeons. In Italy, Enrico Bottini, chief of General Surgery at the Hospital of Novara performed the first total laryngectomy in man in 1875, followed a few years later by Azio Caselli in Reggio Emilia and Francesco Durante in Rome. The latter perceived the need to modify the surgical technique currently being used at that time to remove the larynx. He agreed with the Berlin surgeons Gluck and Sorensen on the need to isolate the respiratory tract as completely as possible from the digestive tract in order to prevent ab ingestis complications and made his own personal modifications to the total laryngectomy techniques proposed by his German colleagues. Professor Francesco Durante proposed, and published in 1904, a new technique for total laryngectomy. In the years to come this technique was adopted by many other general surgeons. Among these, in 1912, his protege Gherardo Ferreri, who later became Director of Otology and Rhinolaryngology at Regia University in Rome, was the first otorhinolaryngologist to perform a total laryngectomy. And thus a new era in laryngology was born, evolving from a purely medical discipline to a topic of surgical interest.