The skin biopsy from 1960

Abstract

The year 1960 marked a transcendent change in the technique of skin biopsy that would simplify and multiply it by a thousand. Let's see, then, what were the skin biopsy methods up to that point.

First. For decades, the suture scalpel was used. It took a habit and surgical experience to do it with an aesthetically acceptable result.

Second. At the end of the fifties, a stainless steel punch called a punch appeared in the dermatological environment, which had to be inserted in a portable dental drill. By means of a pedal, a turbine rotating at high speed, producing a great roar that made patients tremble. He worked in the pathology laboratory of the Luis E. Pierini chair of Dermatology at the Rawson Hospital. This expensive duo "dental punch-lathe" was operated by Jorge Abulafia, who thus became the first protagonist of the change in skin biopsy technique.

Third. Finally, in 1960, the “manual punch” (without a lathe) burst into the dermatological world. It was a punch steel that had to be sterilized with alcohol after each biopsy. Then two new protagonists of the change: Augusto Casalá, head of Dermatology at the Avellaneda Polyclinic and a priest, whose name never I knew, friend of Casalá.