Semm was born to Margarete and Karl Semm in Munich where he attended the Realgymnasium. At the end of World War II he was drafted for the Wehrmacht at the age of 16 and became briefly a Soviet prisoner of war. Upon his return he worked as a toolmaker, before, in 1946, he was able to begin his medical studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He received his MD degree in 1951 and worked at the II. Universitäts-Frauenklinik München. After his habilitation in 1958 he worked at the Frauenklinik Lindenstrasse. In 1964 the University named him Professor and he returned to the II. Universitäts-Frauenklinik. In 1970 Semm was named Director of the Gynecologic Services of the University of Kiel. Semm retired in 1995 and moved to Tucson, Arizona. He died from complications of Parkinson’s disease. Semm was married twice. His first wife, Roswitha, died in 1986 from breast cancer. In 1994 he married Iseult O’Neill. They have two children.
Work
Richard Fikentscher got Semm interested in the treatment of infertility. In 1957, Fikentscher, Semm and three other physicians founded of the Deutsche Gesellschaft zum Studium der Fertilität und Sterilität, renamed Deutsche Gesellschaft für Reproduktionsmedizin in 1998. In the 1960s Semm started to use laparoscopy – he named it ‘’pelviscopy’’ - for gynecologic indications, initially as a diagnostic tool, but soon realizing that the laparoscopic approach had potential for interventive surgery. His experience as toolmaker let him to found the WISAP medical instrument company in 1959 allowing him to developed numerous instruments among them an automated electronic CO2 insufflator, uterine manipulators, thermocoagulators to stop bleeding, and extra- and intracorporeal endocopic knotting devices to tie off vessels or remove organs. When Semm introduced laparoscopic surgery at the University of Kiel, he had to undergo a brain scan at the request of coworkers as “only a person with brain damage would perform such laparoscopic surgery”. During the 1970s Semm pioneered numerous gynecologic laparoscopic operations so that the end of the decade he had performed myomectomies, ovariectomies, ovarian cysts resections, removals of tubal pregnancy, and others. On 13 September 1980 Semm performed the first laparoscopic appendectomy opening up the path for a much wider application of minimally invasive surgery. At first, his operation was severely criticized. Initial attempts to publish it were rejected, and the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology indicated that his technique was “unethical”. The president of the German Surgical Society demanded that Semm should be suspended from medical practice. But Semm was tireless in advocating his techniques and gradually got some surgeons interested. In 1985 Erich Mühe showed that Semm’s laparoscopic approach could be applied for cholecystectomy, and it became the gold standard within a decade and remains so. With the acceptance by general surgery, minimally invasive surgery expanded its applications. Semm produced over 700 publications and spoke at over 1,300 national or international meetings and conventions. He made over 1,000 improvements to instruments.
Awards
President of the International Federation of Fertility Societies
Semm K: Pelviscopy - operative guidelines for „minimally invasive surgery“ following an organ oriented classification. WISAP, Sauerlach b. München 1992,
Semm K: Pelviskopie, ein operativer Leitfaden nach einer organ-orientierten Klassifizierung für „minimal invasive Chirurgie. WISAP, Sauerlach b. München 1991,
Semm K Operationen ohne Skalpell: ein Gynäkologe als Wegbereiter der Minimal Invasiven Medizin, ecomed Verlag, Landsberg 2002,
Mettler L, Semm K: Endoskopische Abdominalchirurgie in der Gynäkologie. Schattauer Verlag, Stuttgart 2002,
