With interest I read Sarah Wieckert's article about Charlie Mohr [""Wisconsin's beloved boxer takes final hit,"" Fall Farewell Issue 2006]. I was the neurosurgeon who attended to Mohr when he was brought to University Hospital. In 1998, I retired from the Department of Neurosurgery at the UW after being on the neurosurgery faculty for 45 and a half years and serving as its chairman for 33 and a half years.
It is indisputable that Mohr received a severe blow to the head during his last fight. Unfortunately, Wieckert's article misrepresents crucial medical facts:
1. Dr. Curreri never ""witnessed"" any part of Mohr's surgery. Besides me, there were only three other doctors present in the operating room: a resident, an intern and the anesthesiologist. Dr. Curreri inquired briefly from the OR hallway what I had found. I informed him Mohr had suffered massive brain damage due to a severe blow to the head. One of the cortical veins had completely sheared off from the sagittal sinus, causing a large tear in the sinus and subdural hemorrhage.
2. Curreri was not qualified to arrive at the diagnosis that Mohr died of a brain aneurysm since he was not present during the surgery. Furthermore, with due respect to Curreri, neurosurgery was not his field of expertise.
Dr. Manucher J. Javid
Professor Emeritus
Former Chairman of Department of Neurological Surgery
