Hermann Schloffer

Hermann Schloffer was an Austrian surgeon, born in Graz in 1868 and dying in 1937. He studied medicine at Freiburg and Graz, earning his doctorate in 1892, and worked as a surgical assistant and associate professor in Prague before serving as surgeon and professor at the University of Innsbruck from 1903 to 1911, then as professor at Charles University in Prague. On 16 March 1907 at Innsbruck he performed the first transsphenoidal operation to remove a pituitary adenoma, although the patient died several weeks later from residual tumor. In 1916 he was the first to remove a spleen for idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, acting on a suggestion from his student Paul Kaznelson. His name is attached to the Schloffer tumor, an uncommon pseudo-tumor of the abdominal wall that can appear years after abdominal surgery.