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Pediatric surgery

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Pediatric Surgeon
Occupation
NamesDoctor, Medical Specialist
Occupation type
Specialty
Activity sectors
Surgery
Description
Education required
Degree in Medicine, Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine
Fields of
employment
Hospitals, Clinics

Pediatric surgery (AE) or paediatric surgery (BE) is a subspecialty of surgery involving the surgery of fetuses, infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. Many pediatric surgeons practice at children's hospitals.

Pediatric surgery arose when medical doctors recognized that children, especially infants and newborns have different medical and surgical needs compared to that of an adult. This reason for this discovery is because children have lower immunity to viruses compared to that of the adults, so children are more likely to easily catch a sickness. Children also react differently to certain treatments and they tend to need extra care, so pediatric surgery was created especially for the children so that they could be treated faster and they would have more care.

Pediatric surgery arose in the middle of the 20th century as the surgical care of birth defects required novel techniques and methods and became more commonly based at children's hospitals. One of the sites of this innovation was Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Beginning in the 1940s under the surgical leadership of C. Everett Koop, newer techniques for endotracheal anesthesia of infants allowed surgical repair of previously untreatable birth defects. By the late 1970s, the infant death rate from several major congenital malformation syndromes had been reduced to near zero.

Subspecialties of pediatric surgery itself include: neonatal surgery and fetal surgery.

Other areas of surgery also have pediatric specialties of their own that require further training during the residencies and in a fellowship: pediatric cardiothoracic (surgery on the child's heart and/or lungs, including heart and/or lung transplantation), pediatric nephrological surgery (surgery on the child's kidneys and ureters, including renal, or kidney, transplantation), pediatric neurosurgery (surgery on the child's brain, central nervous system, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves), pediatric urological surgery (surgery on the child's urinary bladder and other structures below the kidney necessary for urination), pediatric emergency surgery, surgery involving fetuses or embryos (overlapping with obstetric/gynecological surgery, neonatology, and maternal-fetal medicine), surgery involving adolescents or young adults, pediatric hepatological (liver) and gastrointestinal (stomach and intestines) surgery (including liver and intestinal transplantation in children), pediatric orthopedic surgery (muscle and bone surgery in children), pediatric plastic and reconstructive surgery (such as for burns, or for congenital defects like cleft palate not involving the major organs), and pediatric oncological (childhood cancer) surgery.

Common pediatric diseases that may require pediatric surgery include

See also

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