What Exactly Is General Surgery?

While visiting the best hospitals, you must have gotten familiar with multiple domains of the treatment offered by them. If you have discomfort or pain in a particular region, you get treated by a specific specialist. However, many a time, the symptoms are not persistent and thereby you need a consultation with a general physician. Thereafter, either you receive treatment from them or referred to a specific doctor.

Let’s understand the domain of general medicine and surgery in details.

In spite of the usage of the term ‘General’ in the medical domain, the General Surgery mostly deals with the surgeries carried out in the abdominal region. It also includes the esophagus, stomach, small bowel, colon, liver, pancreas, gallbladder, appendix and bile ducts, and often the thyroid gland as well. Moreover, it also comprises the soft tissues of the body and thereby consists of other organs such as breasts, skin, reproductive organs, and more.

The list of surgical procedures carried out by general surgeons is pretty long, but the following general surgical procedures are the most common ones.

1. Appendectomy – Surgical removal of the appendix, when inflammation of the same occurs due to an untreated infection.

2. Breast biopsy – Invasive diagnosis to extract cells in the breast/s to check for malignancy.

3. Breast surgery – Surgical removal of a harmful or unwanted mass of tissues from the breast/s

4. Cataract surgery – Surgical removal of the cloudy lens of the eye to enhance vision.

5. Caesarean section – Surgical delivery of a baby through the mother’s abdomen and uterus.

6. Cholecystectomy – Surgery for removal of the gallbladder, mostly because of gallstones.

7. Debridement – Cleaning of the wound, burn, or infected skin or organ to control damage promote healing.

8. Skin graft – Surgical treatment to replace damaged skin.

9. Haemorrhoidectomy – Surgical removal of haemorrhoids.

10. Hysterectomy and Hysteroscopy – Surgical diagnosis of the uterus and its surrounding organs and removal of the uterus.

11. Hernia repairs – Surgical procedure to correct a hernia.

12. Mastectomy – Partial or total removal of breast/s, mostly because of a malignant tumor.

13. Colectomy – Surgical removal of a part of the colon.

14. Prostatectomy – Surgical removal of partial or total prostate gland.

15. Tonsillectomy – Surgical removal of one or both tonsils.

Several of these procedures are nowadays carried out by laparoscopic technique, in the best hospitals. Laparoscopic surgery is the state-of-the-art surgery procedure that ensures speedy recovery and overcomes multiple drawbacks of traditional, open surveying technique.