Surgical Procedures 101

Surgical procedures often have long and seemingly daunting names, the meaning of which is, at first glance, hard to fathom.

However many can often be easily understood if the name is broken into parts.

eg.  in splenectomy, "ectomy" is a suffix meaning the removal of a part of the body.

"Splene-" means spleen. Therefore it follows that a splenectomy refers to the surgical removal of the spleen, either in part or whole.

However, the suffix "otomy" means to cut into a part of the body and so a splenotomy would be to cut into, but not necessarily remove, the spleen.

The field of minimally invasive surgery has spawned another set of words, such as arthroscopic surgery. This takes the same form as above where an arthroscope is a device which allows the inside of the joint to be seen.

Below is a list of the most commonly used Prefixes which identify the area or organ to be treated, and then a list of the suffixes which indicate the type of procedure to be carried out.

angio- : related to blood vessels
arthr- : related to a joint
colpo- : related to the vagina
encephal- : related to the brain
hepat- : related to the liver
hyster- : related to the uterus
celio- : related to the abdominal cavity
lobo- : related to a lobe (of the brain or lungs)
mammo- and masto-: related to the breast
myo- : related to muscle tissue
nephro- : related to the kidney
oophor- : related to the ovary
orchid- : related to the testicle
vas- : related to a duct, usually the vas deferens
lamino- : related to vertebrae intervertebral disc
gastro- : related to stomach
colono- : related to large intestine colon
cysto- : related to the bladder

and the procedures

-centesis : surgical puncture
-desis : fusion of two parts into one, stabilization
-ectomy : surgical removal
-opsy : looking at
-oscopy : viewing of, normally with a scope
-ostomy or -stomy : surgically creating a hole
-otomy or -tomy : surgical incision
-pexy : to fix or secure
-plasty : to modify or reshape
-rrhapy : to strengthen, usually with suture
-graphy : recording or representation of a specified thing

For More Detailed descriptions of these surgical procedures, have a look at Wikipedia