Felix von Winiwarter

Felix von Winiwater (February 28, 1852 - July 10, 1931) was an Austrian physician who was a native of Vienna. In 1876 he earned his doctorate at the University of Vienna, and remained in Vienna as an assistant in the clinic of Heinrich von Bamberger (1822-1888). Soon afterwards he became a surgical apprentice to Theodor Billroth (1829-1894), and from 1878 to 1881 was a secondary physician under Leopold Ritter von Dittel (1815-1898). In 1881 he became hospital director at "Landesklinikum Weinviertel" in Hollabrunn. He was a younger brother to Alexander von Winiwarter (1848-1917), who also spent part of his career working with Theodor Billroth.

Winiwarter is credited as being the first physician to describe thromboangiitis obliterans. In 1879 he observed a proliferation of intima in the blood vessels of a patient who had presenile spontaneous gangrene, and named the condition "obliterans endarteritis". In 1908 American surgeon Leo Buerger (1879-1943) further described the disease, which was later referred to as "Winiwarter-Buerger syndrome", Buerger's disease or as thromboangiitis obliterans.

References

* "This article is based on a translation of an article from the German Wikipedia."