Sidney Yankauer


Sidney Yankauer was an American otolaryngologist. Working at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, Yankauer was among the first surgeons to specialize in problems of the ear, nose and throat. A common medical suction device, the Yankauer suction tip, is named for him.

Early life

Yankauer was born in New York. His parents were German Jewish immigrants to the United States. He completed undergraduate studies at the City College of New York. He graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1893.

Career

Following an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, he took a position there. He worked with outpatient surgery patients for several years. Though otolaryngology was in its infancy, he increasingly focused on problems of the ear, nose and throat.
During World War I, Yankauer served as a United States Army major in France, where he worked at a hospital largely staffed by Mount Sinai personnel. A story from the hospital in France spoke to Yankauer's ingenuity, and it was told at Mount Sinai for many years. Yankauer and Dr. Howard Lilienthal were working when the quartermaster accidentally locked a safe with the key inside it; the safe contained all the men's money. Yankauer devised a new key so that the safe could be opened and the money retrieved.
Yankauer was president of the Mount Sinai Alumni Association in 1916.
In 1917, laryngology was established as its own department at Mount Sinai with six surgical ward beds, and Yankauer was named its director. He was known for his skill at bronchoscopy; in 1905, he had been the first physician in New York City to use the procedure to remove a foreign body from a patient's airway.

Innovations

Known for his medical innovations, Yankauer devised a suction device for the mouth known as the Yankauer suction tip. The device remains in use in modern medical settings.
Yankauer helped to design several varieties of wire-mesh anesthesia masks, which were known as the Yankauer mask, the Yankauer-Gwathmey mask, and the modified Yankauer-Gwathmey mask. He was president of the American Broncho-Esophagological Association in 1927.

Personal

Yankauer's wife, Grace Prior, was also an otolaryngologist and the couple shared an office. She died in 1914 after falling out of a window at the couple's tenth floor apartment on Park Avenue. Yankauer married Margaret Kearns, a Mount Sinai nursing administrator, in 1919. They had one child. Yankauer died of heart disease at Mount Sinai Hospital in 1932.