Eugen Aburel

Eugen Bogdan Aburel (1899 to 1975) was a Romanian surgeon and obstetrician, born in Galati, who trained in medicine at Iasi and specialised in obstetrics and gynecology after study in Paris at the Tarnier and Boucicaut hospitals. In 1931 he described blocking the lumbar plexus in early labor and a caudal epidural injection for the delivery stage, including a continuous catheter for pain relief in childbirth, and he wrote on the sensory nerve supply of the uterus. In 1934 he developed the method of instillation abortion, and in the 1950s he was the first to describe radical trachelectomy for early cervical cancer, a fertility-sparing operation revived decades later. He held professorships at Iasi and Bucharest, directed the Filantropia obstetrics and gynecology hospital from 1952 to 1969, and was investigated by the communist Securitate for his Western scientific contacts.