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Proponents of the Weinberg technique retort that Dr. Weinberg has had a death rate of only one-half of 1% among 1,129 patients since 1947. Thus, they say, even if the cure rate for a first operation is a few percentage points lower than w:th more drastic surgery, this is more than compensated for by the lower death rate.
Something Better. If the surgeons' arguments are not ended, neither are their ingenious efforts to find better ulcer treatments. Dr. Weinberg is still improving his own technique; he now uses only a single row of stitches to close the slit in the pylorus, reducing the risk of a later shutdown. Other surgeons are combining the Weinberg method with the tying-off of blood vessels, especially for bleeding ulcers. Minnesota's Surgeon Owen H. Wangensteen is trying to make fellow surgeons abandon the knife for nearly all ulcer patients and freeze the stomach instead, a procedure that is hotly debated (TIME, Nov. 8).
The most that can be said so far of any surgery for ulcers is what modest Dr. Weinberg says of his own technique: "It will have to do until we discover something better."