VIDEO: What’s in a name? The pathologist behind Zenker’s diverticulum
In this Endo-Sketch, a Healio video series on clinical conditions named after famous colleagues, Klaus Mergener, MD, of the University of Washington School of Medicine, discusses the origin of Zenker’s diverticulum.
According to Mergener, the condition is named after pathologist Friedrich Albert Zenker, who was born in Dresden, Germany, in 1825. After completing medical school at the universities of Leipzig and Heidelberg, Zenker trained in pathology with Carl von Rokitansky before being appointed professor of pathology and department chair at Erlangen University.
Zenker’s diverticulum — which is essentially a pseudodiverticulum — is characterized by bulging of the mucosa, possibly due to uncoordinated swallowing, impaired relaxation and spasm of the upper esophageal sphincter. The diverticula can become large, leading to dysphagia, regurgitation and eventually cough and recurrent aspiration pneumonia, in which case treatment is required.
“The first report of this kind of a diverticulum had actually been published more than 100 years earlier by Abraham Ludlow from London, but Zenker's name became attached to it because of a book on esophageal diseases, which he published with a co-worker in 1867,” Mergener said.
Although Zenker carefully described clinical features of the diverticulum in the book, he actually was known more for his discovery in 1860 of the pathogenesis of the parasitic disease trichinellosis and for identifying pork as the source of human infection.
“In terms of the diverticulum that now bears his name, we see that you don't always have to be the first person to make a discovery, but you can still end up seeing your name attached to it if your subsequent work describes a condition in a lot of detail,” Mergener concluded.
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Zenker FA, et al. Krankheiten des Oesophagus. 1867.
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