AUGS: The Early Years

By Donald R. Ostergard, MD

During the mid-1960s Jack Robertson was attending at Harbor General Hospital and I was a second year resident. At that time, a Urogynecology clinic was organized at our hospital for basic incontinence evaluation. In 1973, when three other subspecialty boards were being formed, a Harbor Hospital attending and a past president of ACOG, Howard Judd, was asked to form a subspecialty board in what is now Urogynecology, but he did not feel that the field was big enough to warrant a separate subspecialty.

During my sabbatical in the 1975 academic year a literature review revealed the fragmented nature of the field. This motivated me to begin my research to evaluate the need for an organization focused on female incontinence. I began visits to the then current leaders in the diagnosis and treatment of this condition, gynecologists Stuart Stanton in London, Torkel Rud and Mogens Asmussen in Oslo, and urologist Emil Tanagho in San Francisco.

The first step toward organization was attempted resulting in postgraduate courses in this new field to educate physicians in the evaluation of incontinence with an international faculty of experts. During each course participants were asked whether a society devoted to the dissemination of information in the urological aspects of gynecology would be of interest. The response was universally positive and the groundwork was laid to officially organize a non-profit organization.

In 1979, AUGS was formed in a living room in Orange County, California by Jack Robertson, Finnis Wiggins, Earl Fuller, Fred Jansen, and myself. Dr. Fuller’s wife was an attorney who drafted all the necessary paperwork to legalize the organization as a non-profit California corporation. At this meeting Jack Robertson became President and I assumed the role of Secretary-Treasurer with my secretary, Collette, assuming the same functions that SmithBucklin now performs for the society. Earl Fuller wrote a quarterly newsletter reviewing current publications of interest to the membership.

The growth of the Society and the field of urogynecology and pelvic reconstructive surgery has been more than any of use could have envisioned. For this we are grateful since, most of all, our female patients have benefited as a result of the stimulation of scientific advancement and resultant positive clinical applications.