***Dr. Gelernt studied in Sweden with Nils Kock or Koch [ some pronouce it Koke or Kotch ] Take your pick. Dr. Gelernt died in 1996 of a heart attack.***
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Dr. Irwin M. Gelernt, a surgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital Center who advanced the diagnosis and treatment of inflammatory bowel disease, died on Monday at Mount Sinai. He was 60 and lived in Manhattan.

The cause was a heart attack, the hospital said.

Dr. Gelernt was an attending surgeon at Mount Sinai and a clinical professor of surgery and dean of hospital and medical affairs at its medical school. He interned at the Cornell Division of the Bellevue Hospital Center, went to Mount Sinai for surgical training and joined the surgical staff in 1967 after completing his residency.

Earlier in his research, he focused on the problems and complications of organ transplants. He was a member of the team that performed the first kidney transplants at Mount Sinai, and he studied the rejection phenomenon. He helped isolate one factor in agglutination, or clumping, of platelets in blood plasma.

As his practice grew, he turned his attention to inflammations of the bowel and went to Sweden to train with Dr. Nils Kock, inventor of the Kock pouch procedure.

In 1970, Dr. Gelernt and Dr. Isadore Kreel, a partner at Mount Sinai, were the first to perform the procedure in this country. The procedure creates an internal reservoir and valved opening from doubled loops of the ileum, the terminal portion of the small intestine, so that patients do not have to wear an external pouch.

The procedure radically improved the lives of young patients afflicted with ulcerating colitis; Dr. Gelernt became a national authority in the development of restorative surgery in that area.

Dr. Gelernt was born in Brooklyn and graduated from the State University Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn in 1961.

He is survived by his wife, Lois Velmer Gelernt; a son, Lee, and two daughters, Michelle, and Alicia Shimkin, all of Manhattan, and a sister, Miriam Kahn of Greenwich, Conn.

Thanks. Especially for me, someone whose K-pouch was created by Dr. Gelernt, it is really interesting to read that history.

Thanks also for sending and letting the group aware of Dr. Gellernt. He was the true K-pouch expert in the field. After having gone through 5 years of leaking w/a previous surgeon, he fixed my pouch and I have not had a problem in 25 years. He literally saved my life and I miss him dearly. His bedside manor was great and his reputation has a surgeon was 2nd to none.