The transverse abdominal incision has been used nearly one hundred years. Baudelocque1 used it prior to 1847 for cesarean sections, but it was Pfannenstiel,2 in 1900, who popularized its use in pelvic operations. Maylard3 (1899), of Glasgow, first used a transverse incision in the upper part of the abdomen. In making this incision, he sectioned all layers of the abdominal wall in a transverse plane. An intra-abdominal hemorrhage that occurred after the closure of a median vertical incision led him to employ a transverse incision for the second laparotomy. He subsequently observed that the transverse section healed more quickly and more firmly than the median vertical one, in which a hernia developed.
Boeckmann,4 of St. Paul, unaware of Maylard's observations, first employed the transverse incision in all types of abdominal operations in 1906. Sprengel5 introduced it to the Continental surgeons in 1910 and, in conjunction