This invention was a breakthrough in thorax medicine and allowed heart and lung operations to take place at greatly reduced risk.

As a battlefield surgeon during World War I, he developed several new types of limb prostheses, which for the first time enabled simple movements to be executed with the remaining muscle of the patient.

Sauerbruch worked at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich from 1918 to 1927 on surgical techniques and diets for treating tuberculosis.

[1] He was a fervent nationalist who wanted to undo the "humiliation of Versailles" and was keen to show off his country as an advanced and sophisticated society.

He was part of the so-called Mittwochsgesellschaft (de) (Wednesday Society), a group of scientists that included critical voices; and after 20 July 1944 he was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo because his son Peter had ties to Claus von Stauffenberg.

As head of the General Medicine Branch of the RRC, it was alleged that he personally approved the funds which financed August Hirt's experiments with mustard gas on prisoners at Natzweiler concentration camp from 1941 until 1944.

Late in life, he developed dementia and was dismissed from the Charité because he continued to perform surgeries on patients, some with uncertain results.