Harry Buncke, M.D. (1922–2008)

It is a rare person who is able to take a dream through the conceptualization period, design the early instrumentation, and produce the animal studies needed to finally bring the concept into successful human use. The astronauts who went to the moon were not involved in developing the underlying concepts nor were they involved in developing the hardware that took them to the moon. Dr. Buncke, however, is that rare person who was not only involved in all of the stages in the development of microsurgery, but continued to teach the concepts to hundreds of physicians who can carry on his work. He truly was a remarkable and rare individual. For those of us that knew him, it was an extreme privilege.

Born in Canada and raised in Maine, Dr. Buncke was the son of an American paper mill engineer. After World War II service in the submarine corps, he met his wife Constance. They married prior to starting medical school. Buncke entered a general surgery training program and then in 1954 started his plastic surgery residency at Cornell University Medical School with Dr. Herbert Conway. In 1957 he was a Senior Registrar at the Plastic Surgical and Burn Unit in Glasgow, Scotland where he was influenced by Thomas Gibson to study the field of transplantation and vessel repair.

The Bunckes settled in Woodside, California in 1959 where he encountered many traumatic digital amputations in his practice. Determined to develop techniques for microsurgical reattachment, he worked in a laboratory set up in his garage. With his wife Constance and Werner Schultz he developed minute metallicized tip sutures and used the rabbit ear reattachment as his animal model. He modified delicate instruments for use in his procedures. The first successful rabbit ear reattachment was achieved in 1964 and reported at the Plastic Surgery Research Council in Kansas City, Kansas. This was followed in 1966 with the transplantation of a monkey great toe to the hand. The first successful transplantation of the omentum was done in 1969. In 1970 he founded the Buncke Clinic at the Davis Medical Center in San Francisco, California. While there, many microvascular firsts occurred—the first U.S. human toe to hand transplant, scalp replantation, serratus-combined latissimus transplant, four-digit replantation, and in 1997 a successful replantation of a severed tongue.

He was a Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco and Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery at Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto. He served as Director of the American Board of Plastic Surgery from 1976 to 1982. During that same period he served on the Residency Review Committee. He was President of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand in 1980, President of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons in 1982, and President and Chairman of the International Society of Reconstructive Microsurgery in 1977. He was awarded Clinician of the Year by the American Association of Plastic Surgeons in 1989, the Top 10 Plastic Surgeons of the 20th Century in 2001, and the Jacobson Innovation Award by the American College of Surgeons in 2004. The California Pacific Medical Center funds an annual lectureship in Dr. Buncke's name at the Meeting of the American Society of Reconstructive Microsurgery.

Dr. Buncke is survived by his wife Constance, his three sons, Greg, Geoff and Paul, and a daughter, Adele, and six grandchildren.

His title, unofficially granted, as the “Father of Microsurgery” is well deserved and unequivocally recognized. We will all miss him.

Figure 1 Harry and Greg Buncke at work (undated).

Figure 2 The young microsurgeon (undated).

Figure 3 Thumbs up to all his colleagues (undated).

Figure 4 Micro workshop and symposium; The Roosevelt Hotel; October 14–18, 1974. Left to right: Avron Danniller, Harry Buncke, Michael Lewin, Berish Strauch.