[2] During his time at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, both in his residency and subsequent career, he published hundreds of publications and book chapters on burn care, wound healing, surgical instrument design, and rehabilitation.
[4] As well as beginning his research career in his time there, he was involved in the development of the burn unit and prehospital care service at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center.
[7] He developed a skin wound cleanser safe enough to be poured into the patient's eye without toxic effects, a solution of poloxamer 188 that has now been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is now marketed as Shur-Clens by Convatec (Skillman, New Jersey).
[10] Edlich soon realized the limitations of the thick, narrow-diameter latex Ewald tubes that were being used to evacuate blood clots from the patient's stomach before endoscopic examination.
Edlich helped to quantitate the perfusion of a saphenous vein graft implanted in canine ischemic myocardium using tissue blood flow measurements.
[12] During his surgical career, Edlich and his team of scientists made important scientific contributions that have protected health care workers as well as operating room personnel.
His scientific investigation proved conclusively that cornstarch was a dangerous foreign body that potentiated wound infection and was a vector for the latex allergy epidemic.