Welcome to the community hub built on top of the Elise Sørensen Wikipedia article. Here, you can discuss, collect, and organize anything related to Elise Sørensen.
Personal Life and Relationships
Early Life and Education
Nursing Career and the Inspiration for the Colostomy Bag
Main milestones
Later Life and Death
Impact and Legacy
Invention and Development of the Colostomy Bag
Collaboration with Aage Louis-Hansen and Coloplast
Elise Sørensen (Kalundborg, 2 July 1903 – Ordrup, 5 July 1977)[1] was a Danish nurse and the inventor of the colostomy bag.[2]
Sørensen was born on 2 July 1903 in Kalundborg to Valdemar Sofus and Ane Dorthea (née Andersen) and was educated in Holbæk and Viborg. She worked as a home care nurse from 1929, including over twenty years at a health insurance company in Ordrup-Skovshoved.[1]
In 1953 her sister had an ostomy operation (a procedure that takes the end of the intestine out through the abdomen, allowing waste to exit via a surgically created stoma).[3] After the operation, Sørensen's sister was uncomfortable going outside due to fear that stoma might leak, due to the metal/glass capsules or fabric/rubber bags that people used at the time.[4][5] Sørensen then created the world's first disposable ostomy bag attachable through an adhesive ring.[6] With help from a lawyer from the Danish Nurses' Association, she applied for a patent for her invention in 1954 and approached the plastics manufacturer Aage Louis-Hansen for assistance with putting the bag into wider production. Louis-Hansen initially declined, but was persuaded to agree by his wife, Johanne Louis-Hansen, who was also a nurse and saw the clinical need. Sørensen paid for the initial manufacturing costs herself and oversaw testing of the bags on patients at various institutions. Louis-Hansen founded the company Coloplast in 1957 on the basis of Sørensen's invention.[1]
Sørensen ceased working in 1957 due to issues with depression. She died on 5 July 1977 in a psychiatric hospital where she had spent her final years.[1]
