Norman Dott, Gerard Guiot, and Jules Hardy: key players in the resurrection of transsphenoidal surgery

Developed over a century ago, the introduction of the transsphenoidal approach to access lesions of the pituitary gland and sella turcica has transformed the field of neurosurgery, largely due to the work of Oskar Hirsch and Harvey Cushing. Furthermore, its use and modification in the early 1900s was perhaps one of Cushing's greatest legacies to skull base surgery. However, there was a period of time from 1929 to 1932 when use of the transsphenoidal approach almost became extinct. Cushing, who had worked relentlessly to improve the transsphenoidal route to the pituitary region, abandoned the approach in his pursuit to master transcranial approaches. At the time, few surgeons including Hirsch continued to do transnasal surgery with great success on a smaller scale.