Article Tools

Dr Stanley Dudrick, 82, stands near his former home at 414 W Union St., Nanticoke. The legendary Nanticoke doctor is being honored as being one of the top 50 doctors in world history.Mark Morancv16dudrickp4

Dr Stanley Dudrick, 82, stands on the front porch of his former home at 414 W Union St., Nanticoke. The legendary Nanticoke doctor is being honored as being one of the top 50 doctors in world history. Mark Moran cv16dudrickp1

NANTICOKE As a rookie physician in the early 1960s, Dr. Stanley Dudrick was so frustrated with his patients dying he nearly switched specialties. Instead, the Nanticoke native revolutionized the medical world.

The descendant of Nanticoke coal miners, Dudrick invented the intravenous feeding method known as total parenteral nutrition, or TPN, which is considered one of the most important breakthroughs in modern surgery.

Known as the father of intravenous feeding, Dudrick is constantly ranked among the most influential doctors in world history for his pioneering work, which he unveiled in July 1967 at age 32. His work is credited with saving millions of lives.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of Dudricks invention and his hometown is planning a big honor for him this week.

It seems very simple and obvious now, but at the time it terrified the medical profession, Dudrick said. A lot of people said it wouldnt work and youre going to kill people. I had to convince doctors not only that it would work, but it would be safe. Soon, it took the world by storm. And the rest is history.

Nanticoke City will recognize Wednesday as Dr. Dudrick Day. A historical marker will be unveiled at the monthly city council meeting that night at Luzerne County Community College. The plaque will eventually be erected outside Dudricks childhood home on West Union Street, which his grandfather built during evenings after long days working underground in the mines.

Dudrick invented TPN while a surgical resident at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. He always intended to return to the Wyoming Valley, but after his invention, his skill level was too far advanced for what was being practiced in local hospitals.

He became a professor of surgery at Penn. He helped launch the surgery department of the University of Texas Medical School and became chief of surgery at the universitys hospital. He was named chairman of the surgery department at Pennsylvania Hospital, the oldest in the nation. Later, he was tapped as surgery department chairman at the Yale University School of Medicine.

But Dudrick always longed to come back home. And in 2011, he did.

Dudrick, 82, is now the director of the physician assistant program at Misericordia University and is a professor of surgery at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine.

All these years later, I still wanted to come back home to kind of pay back the people who helped me grow up and support me and allowed me to go off and get a great education, Dudrick said. I had this emotional draw to come back to the area.

Dr. Steven J. Scheinman, president and dean of the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, called Dudrick a mythical character whose contribution to medicine ranks in importance with the development of open heart surgery and organ transplantation.

I think its fitting that Stans monumental contribution has been to nourish people. Thats what true philanthropists do they find ways to sustain and uplift people and never forget that all the technological wizardry in the world cannot replace simple caring, nurturing and compassion, Scheinman said.

Scheinman noted Dudrick developed hundreds of scientific and technological advances to invent TPN, but never sought to patent any of his work.

Had he done so, and licensed and profited from them, he would today be a billionaire, Scheinman said. But he felt that to do so would limit access to these advances by patients and their doctors, and limit their benefit, so he intentionally did not do that. So Stan is not just humble and brilliant, he is absolutely selfless.

Contact the writer:

bkalinowski@citizensvoice.com

570-821-2055, @cvbobkal

Link:

A pioneer in medicine gets his day - Standard Speaker