General Surgery
General Surgery
Modern surgery has developed to such an extent that the body of knowledge and technical skills required have led to surgeons specializing in particular areas, usually an anatomical area of the body or occasionally in a particular technique or type of patient.
There are ten surgical specialties and this briefing covers general surgery.
What do general surgeons do?
As the title indicates, this is a wide-ranging area of surgery with many subspecialties. The defining feature of general surgeons is that they have a wide range of knowledge and skills to deal with all kinds of surgical emergencies, with an emphasis on acute abdominal problems. They also carry out a large number of elective operations.
In trauma services they deal with injuries to the abdomen and chest.
Some areas of general surgery have grown in extent as surgery develops, and most operating on arteries or carrying out transplants have specialized exclusively in these areas. However, they retain their general surgical skills and base.
Subspecialties
Given the wide range of work undertaken by general surgeons, one of distinguishing features of general surgery is the range of sub-specialties that lie within it. These include:
- Breast – assessment of the large number of patient with breast symptoms, and surgery on breast cancers, often including reconstructive procedures that do not require plastic surgeons.
- Colorectal – surgery for diseases of the colon, rectum and anal canal, particularly cancer of the rectum.
- Endocrine – surgery for disease of the thyroid and other endocrine glands.
- Upper Gastrointestinal – surgery for diseases affecting the liver, esophagus and stomach. This also covers obesity surgery. Major operations for cancer are usually done in regional specialist units.
- Transplant – kidney and liver transplantation are the routine procedures, but many other organs may be transplanted.
The majority of simple operations on children are also carried out by general surgeons.
Developments
General surgery is in the vanguard for the introduction of minimally invasive procedures:
Laparoscopic (or “keyhole”) surgery is recognized as an integral and crucial skill that is developing across the entirety of general surgical practice and its subspecialties. Operations are being carried out increasingly by minimally invasive techniques that offer patients less pain, better outcomes and shorter postoperative recovery. Virtually every abdominal operation can and has been done by this route.
Examples of this are operations for morbid obesity, hernia repair and removal of malignant tumors of the bowel.