The relationship of Kartagener's syndrome to immobile cilia syndrome is a 
fascinating merging of clinical observations and basic science in Zurich, 
Stockholm, and Toronto. In 1933, Manes Kartagener, a Zurich pulmonary physician, 
reported four patients with the triad of sinusitis, bronchiectasis, and situs 
inversus. In the following decades, he reviewed reports of hundreds of cases, 
but the fact that the male patients with the condition never had offspring 
eluded his notice. In the 1970s, Bjorn Afzelius, a Ph.D. ultrastructuralist from 
Stockholm, reported cilia immotility in infertile males, some of the cases 
occurring in families. Half of the cases had Kartagener's triad. The observation 
of Afzelius was soon applied to children by Jennifer Sturgess, a Ph.D. 
ultrastructuralist, and her medical colleagues in Toronto. With over 500 MEDLINE 
references since 1966 on Kartagener's and over 1,000 references on immotile 
cilia, the causes of the pulmonary infections have become clearer as the 
patients demonstrate impaired clearance of mucus with resultant sinus and 
bronchial disease. The cause of the situs inversus remains elusive to this day. 
It is appropriate to call the condition Kartagener-Afzelius syndrome.