Paul Randall Harrington - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Paul Randall Harrington (September 27, 1911 – November 29, 1980) was an American orthopaedic surgeon. He is best known as the designer of the Harrington Rod, the first device for the straightening and immobilization of the spine

Vertebral column

In human anatomy, the vertebral column is a column usually consisting of 24 articulating vertebrae, and 9 fused vertebrae in the sacrum and the coccyx. It is situated in the dorsal aspect of the torso, separated by intervertebral discs...

inside the body. It entered common use in the early 1960s and remained the gold standard for scoliosis surgery until the late 1990s. During this period over one million people benefited from Harrington's procedure.

Early life

Harrington was born September 27, 1911 and educated in the Kansas City

Kansas City, Kansas

Kansas City is the third-largest city in the state of Kansas and is the county seat of Wyandotte County. It is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the third largest city in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. The city is part of a consolidated city-county government known as the "Unified...

school system, from which he graduated in 1930, having been named one of the State of Kansas' 15 most outstanding high-school graduates. He had initially not planned to go to college but changed his mind after being offered a basketball scholarship

Athletic scholarship

An athletic scholarship is a form of scholarship to attend a college or university awarded to an individual based predominantly on his or her ability to play in a sport...

by the University of Kansas

University of Kansas

The University of Kansas is a public research university and the largest university in the state of Kansas. KU campuses are located in Lawrence, Wichita, Overland Park, and Kansas City, Kansas with the main campus being located in Lawrence on Mount Oread, the highest point in Lawrence. The...

. During his time at the University of Kansas he competed on their basketball team, which won the Big Eight

Big Eight Conference

The Big Eight Conference, a former NCAA-affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored football, was formed in January 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association by its charter member schools: the University of Kansas, University of Missouri, University...

championship three years in a row. In his senior year he was elected captain of the team.

An initial interest in the field of physical education bloomed into an interest in medicine. He attended the University of Kansas School of Medicine and graduated in 1939, having worked his way through school playing semi-professional basketball. In 1936 he tried out for the national Olympic team

United States at the Olympics

The United States of America has sent athletes to every celebration of the modern Olympic Games, except the 1980 Summer Olympics, which it boycotted.The United States Olympic Committee is the National Olympic Committee for the United States....

and won the championship of his region in the javelin

Javelin throw

The javelin throw is a track and field athletics throwing event where the object to be thrown is the javelin, a spear approximately 2.5 metres in length. Javelin is an event of both the men's decathlon and the women's heptathlon...

, but did not end up attending the finals in Chicago due to the cost involved.

Harrington undertook his internship and first year of surgical residency

Residency (medicine)

Residency is a stage of graduate medical training. A resident physician or resident is a person who has received a medical degree , Podiatric degree , Dental Degree and who practices...

at Roper Hospital, Charleston, South Carolina, after which he returned to St Luke's Hospital

Saint Luke's Hospital (Kansas City, Missouri)

Saint Luke's Hospital is an tertiary care hospital located in Kansas City, Missouri. It is part of the Saint Luke's Health System.-Hospital Background:...

in Kansas City, where he completed his residency in orthopaedic surgery in 1942, under Doctors Frank Dickson and Rex Dively. He then joined the United States Army.

In the Army, from May 1942 to November 1945 Harrington served as a doctor at the 77th Evacuation Hospital

Medicine Under Canvas

Medicine Under Canvas is a book and a documentary film about the 77th Evacuation Hospital during WWII. The very rare book is 200 pages long and is arguably the most detailed history of an evacuation hospital in the European and North African theatres of war...

in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, acting as chief of the orthopaedic service. The 77th Evacuation Hospital was made up largely of medical practitioners from the University of Kansas Schools of Medicine and Nursing, and saw service in Europe and Africa. It was during his time with the 77th that Harrington encountered such military celebrities as General George S. Patton

George S. Patton

George Smith Patton, Jr. was a United States Army officer best known for his leadership while commanding corps and armies as a general during World War II. He was also well known for his eccentricity and controversial outspokenness.Patton was commissioned in the U.S. Army after his graduation from...

.

Following the war Harrington moved to Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

and worked as a surgeon at Jefferson Davis County Hospital in Houston. During the post-war years a poliomyelitis

Poliomyelitis

Poliomyelitis, often called polio or infantile paralysis, is an acute viral infectious disease spread from person to person, primarily via the fecal-oral route...

epidemic caused polio cases to swell dramatically and they eventually became his main priority. At this time he worked with the Baylor College of Medicine

Baylor College of Medicine

Baylor College of Medicine, located in the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas, USA, is a highly regarded medical school and leading center for biomedical research and clinical care...

to create the Southwest Respiratory Foundation of the National Infantile Paralysis Association, the first such organisation in the United States.

Polio patients would sometimes develop scoliosis

Scoliosis

Scoliosis is a medical condition in which a person's spine is curved from side to side. Although it is a complex three-dimensional deformity, on an X-ray, viewed from the rear, the spine of an individual with scoliosis may look more like an "S" or a "C" than a straight line...

, a condition where the spine becomes curved laterally (from side to side). Harrington realised that existing treatments for scoliosis, which relied heavily on physical therapy

Physical therapy

Physical therapy , often abbreviated PT, is a health care profession. Physical therapy is concerned with identifying and maximizing quality of life and movement potential within the spheres of promotion, prevention, diagnosis, treatment/intervention,and rehabilitation...

, were inappropriate for patients paralysed by polio, and began to research new treatments. An early method he tried for scoliotic polio patients was manual correction of the scoliotic deformity at the time of surgery, and internal fixation of each facet. There were some benefits to this treatment but Harrington found that the fixation would not hold. The hooks and threaded rods used would corrode and break, causing curvature to return to the spine. Two patients of this procedure died.

Undeterred, from the late 1940s to late 1950s Harrington worked on what would eventually become known as the Harrington implant, or Harrington Rod.

The Harrington Rod

The Harrington Rod, or Harrington implant, is a device for the straightening of the spine inside the body, designed by Paul Harrington. The device consists of a stainless steel rod, attached to the spine at the top and bottom of the curve with hooks. Attached ratchets are then tightened to distract or straighten the spine. Following surgery to insert the rod, the patient wears a postoperative plaster cast or brace for a few months, until vertebral fusion has occurred, after which the cast or brace is removed.

Harrington's first uses of the device that would become the Harringon Rod involved creating fresh instruments on the night before a prospective surgery. Following the surgery, he would modify the design for use on the next patient, making alterations based on his perception of the surgery outcome.

Once Harrington was satisfied with the basic design, he arranged for extensive testing of the instruments at the Engineering Department at Rice University

Rice University

William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a heavily wooded campus in Houston, Texas, United States...

in Houston, Texas, and at a commercial testing company in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

.

He publicly presented the process at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons in Chicago in 1958, where it was met with "astonishment and deep skepticism".

However, the process slowly gained acceptance. In 1959 Harrington contracted with the medical manufacturing firm Zimmer

Zimmer Holdings

-History:Zimmer was founded in 1927 and is headquartered in Warsaw, Indiana, where it is part of the medical devices business cluster there.-Products:...

to make his instrumentation available to other doctors. He insisted, however, that no one be allowed to use the rods without first seeing him demonstrate the procedure. Time Magazine reported in 1960, "Some ailments seem almost preferable to their cures. A case in point is scoliosis, an abnormal curvature of the spine that occurs in childhood. [The] treatment seems so punishing that [parents] cannot be persuaded to permit it even to save their children from permanent deformity. Last week Houston surgeon Paul Harrington, MD, was winning converts to a new and happier method."

The major drawback of the Harrington Rod is that it straightens out the normal front to back curvature of the segment of the spine that is fused, which in many patients results in a flat back deformity, also known as "flatback syndrome". Advances in surgical techniques and technology in the late 1990s were eventually able, in most cases, to correct scoliosis without causing flatback syndrome, leading to the gradual phasing out of the Harrington Rod.

Late life

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harrington travelled extensively, demonstrating the techniques associated with the Harrington Rod. During this time he developed an interest in boats, which led to designing and building a 54-foot aluminium catamaran. He also dabbled in photography and high-fidelity systems.

In 1966, Harrington was one of the founding members of the Scoliosis Research Society

Scoliosis Research Society

Scoliosis Research Society is a non-profit, professional, international organization, made up of physicians and allied health personnel, whose purpose is to "care for those with spinal deformity throughout life by patient care, education, research and patient advocacy." Founded in 1966 with 35...

, of which he later served as President from 1972 to 1973. He also acted as orthopaedic consultant to the United States Air Force

United States Air Force

The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...

and United States Army

United States Army

The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

in San Antonio, Texas.

He acted as a Professor of the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery and a Professor of the Department of Rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine. In 1973 he received the Cora and Webb Mading Medal from the Institute for Rehabilitation and Research and Baylor College of Medicine, and in the same year he also received the Nicholas Andry Award from the Association of Bone and Joint Surgeons. In 1975 he received a Most Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Medical Alumni Association at the University of Kansas.

Between 1972 and his death in 1980, Harrington worked with Marc Addason Asher to institute the Mary Alice and Paul R. Harrington Distinguished Professorship of Molecular Orthopedics at Kansas University Medical College.

Death and legacy

Harrington died in Houston, Texas, on November 29, 1980.

In an obituary following his death, the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery

Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery

The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery refers to two distinct journals of the same name: Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, American Volume and Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, British Volume...

said, "Paul will be remembered not only for the development of the Harrington instruments, but for his straightforward frankness, his bowties, his par golf, his smile, his trumpet, and above all for being a nice person."

By will, Harrington left his professional materials to the University of Kansas Medical Centre, where they are now known as the Harrington Archives. The archives contain "Harrington’s professional papers, photographs, publications, manuscripts, blueprints, drawings, and examples of the Harrington Rod". They also include "biographical information, presentations, professional correspondence files, personal correspondence, personal photographs, movies, and videotapes. Display cases in the archives exhibit photographs, documents, and artifacts that depict the history of Harrington’s life and career".

In 1992, Harrington's writings were collected by Nancy J. Hulston and Marc A. Asher in The Collected Writings of Paul Randall Harrington, MD, published by Lowell Press.

Baylor College of Medicine awards the Paul Harrington Award for Excellence in Orthopaedic Research in recognition of Harrington's contribution to spinal surgery.

Early life

The Harrington Rod

Late life

Death and legacy

See also