Draft:Gerald L Burke

Gerald Louis Burke
Born	(1906-12-29)29 December 1906 Bloemfontein, South Africa
Education	MD, 1938
Alma mater	University of Alberta
Occupations	medical researcher surgeon author
Years active	30+
Spouses	Constance Jacqueline Wilson (1919-1944) Margaret Elsie Perkins (1921-1998)

Gerald Louis Burke, MD (born (1906-12-29)29 December 1906) was a Canadian surgeon, medical researcher, academic, and a pioneer in the development, manufacture, and the first known use of tantalum metal plates and fasteners for the stable surgical repair of bone fractures. Later, in Vancouver's St. Paul's Hospital, he led a team of surgeons developing surgical remedies for spinal injuries and chronic back pain. His work on backache led to the publication of "Backache from Occiput to Coccyx" in 1958 and, together with Bernard Grumler, contributed to "Suspensionthérapie et pouliethérapie - Guide Pratique" by Sauramps Médical in 1993.

The Use of Metals in Orthopaedic Surgery

Burke's early research at the Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital and the California Institute of Technology, was focused on the use of metals in surgery, and his pioneering research was published in 1940 under "The Corrosion of Metals in Tissues; an Introduction to Tantalum" In "The Corrosion of Metals in Tissues", Burke provides a detailed analysis of the various metals attempted in surgical repairs, and describes the chemistry of the success and failure of previous experiments. Other than routine industrial accidents, some of his other major surgical specializations were polio reconstruction, and repair of military battle damage to avoid amputation with its concomitant challenging consequences. Burke described his team's first known use of tantalum in femoral and intertrochanteric fractures, for arthroplasty joint replacement, for clean non-scarring sutures, and for repair of trauma damage resulting from industrial or war-time battle injuries, and, eventually, for dental and jaw surgery prior to developing cosmetic fittings for dental implants. Burke's analysis of chemically/biologically inert metals like tantalum and titanium, and his engineering of the manufacturing processes, led to the now widely accepted use of these metals in orthopaedic surgery and dentistry. Burke showed that both metals were strong enough and sufficiently stable for human implants in spite of the early difficulty in refining and fabrication.

Burke's subsequent work in the field of chronic joint pain was first mentioned in Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery in 1951. Burke later wrote and published in 1958 Backache from Occiput to Coccyx explaining the baffling and challenging issue of chronic back pain, and new innovative and simplified surgical procedures. This work was reviewed in "The Simple Problem of Backache", Bulletin of the Vancouver Medical Association, March 1958.

References

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Categories:

• 1906 births
• Canadian surgeons
• Canadian medical researchers
• Canadian academics
• People from Bloemfontein
• University of Alberta alumni
• Year of death missing