Surgery
Surgery is the medical specialty that treats diseases or injuries by operative manual and instrumental treatment. Its practitioners are referred to as surgeons.
Key points
Although surgeons are now considered to be specialised physicians, the profession of surgeon and that of physician have different historical roots. For example, the Hippocratic Oath warns physicians against practicing surgery (in particular surgery to relieve kidney stones), which was to be left to specialized craftsmen.
Among the first surgeons were battlefield doctors in the Napoleonic Wars who were primarily concerned with amputation. Naval surgeons were often barber-surgeons, who combined surgery with their main jobs as barbers.
Common surgical procedures
Of the eight most common surgical procedures in the US, four are obstetric: episiotomy, repair of obstetric laceration, cesarean section, and artificial rupture of the amniotic membrane.
According to 1996 data from the US National Center for Health Statistics, 40.3 million inpatient surgical procedures were performed in the United States in 1996, followed closely by 31.5 million outpatient surgeries.
Noted surgeons
- Christiaan Barnard
- Norman Bethune (1890-1939), battlefield surgery.
- William deVries
- David Hayes Agnew
- William Jardine
- Walter Karl Koch
- Sushruta
- George H Tichenor
