General Surgery

General Surgery

General surgery is a surgical specialty that focuses on abdominal contents including the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, liver, pancreas, gallbladder, appendix, and bile ducts, and often the thyroid gland (depending on local referral patterns). They also deal with diseases involving the skin, breast, soft tissue, trauma, Peripheral artery disease, and hernias and perform endoscopic procedures such as gastroscopy and colonoscopy.

Laparoscopic surgery is a surgical technique in which short, narrow tubes (trochars) are inserted into the abdomen through small (less than one centimeter) incisions. Through these trochars, long, narrow instruments are inserted. The surgeon uses these instruments to manipulate, cut, and sew tissue.

Working this way has several advantages compared with traditional surgery. Because it involves less cutting:

• You have smaller scars.
• You get out of the hospital quicker.
• You’ll feel less pain while the scars heal, and they heal quicker.
• You get back to your normal activities sooner.
• You may have less internal scarring.

Here’s an example. With traditional methods, you might spend a week or more in the hospital for intestinal surgery, and your total recovery might take 4 to 8 weeks. If you have laparoscopic surgery, you might stay only 2 nights in the hospital and recover in 2 or 3 weeks. And a shorter hospital stay generally costs less.

Compared to traditional open surgery, patients often experience less pain, a shorter recovery, and less scarring with laparoscopic surgery.

Most intestinal surgeries can be performed using the laparoscopic technique. These include surgery for Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, diverticulitis, cancer, rectal prolapse, and severe constipation.