[Gerhard Küntscher and intramedullary fixation].

Gerhard Küntscher, a German surgeon, was born in Zwickau in 1900. He graduated from the School of Medicine in Jena in 1926. He is renowned for the development of intramedullary fixation as a solution for fixation of fractures in the long bones. He worked in the Freiburg and Hamburg hospitals, but gained most experience during the Second World War, when he was on the Eastern front. In the period 1943-1944, he was the chief surgeon in the German military hospital in Kemio (Finland). After the war, he worked in hospitals is Schleswig and Hamburg until his retirement in 1965. He introduced the method of percutaneous intramedullary nailing in the femur fractures, as well as the interlocking nail, nail fixation of the pertrochanteric fractures and nails for intramedullary osteotomy. He published over 200 papers and 4 books. In his papers, he was often ahead of his time, and today is considered one of the founders of the concept of intramedullary fixation in fractures.