What Is Pediatric Surgery?

Pediatric surgery is the medical specialty concerned with the surgical treatment of infants, children and adolescents. Pediatric surgeons are the healthcare providers responsible for carrying out these procedures after crafting a pre-operative plan based on the patient’s findings. The surgery may be divided into several different areas of expertise.

These include general, gynecological, urological and cardiothoracic surgeries. An emerging specialty within this field is prenatal surgery. Pediatric surgery is an essential and separate specialty, because there are significant differences, in terms of physiological and psychological parameters, in the pediatric population versus the adult.

Surgery in the pediatric population is always done with several factors taken into serious consideration. Once such factor is the likelihood of spontaneous improvement, which negates the need for surgery, because there are always risks involved with the operation. There are also risks as it pertains to the anomaly or disease that the patient has.