Procedure and Surgery Terms

A laparotomy is an open surgical incision through the abdominal wall, performed to directly examine, diagnose, or treat conditions inside the abdominal cavity.

A laryngectomy is a surgical procedure that removes all or part of the larynx, most often to treat laryngeal cancer.

Laser surgery uses a focused, high energy beam of light to cut, seal, or remove tissue with precision across many surgical fields.

A blood donation run in reverse: the machine keeps the white cells and hands back everything else, over several hours.

A procedure that may be used to deliver anticancer drugs directly to an arm or leg.

A lobectomy removes one entire lobe of an organ, most often the lung, sparing the rest of the organ and its function.

A technique that uses electric current passed through a thin wire loop to remove abnormal tissue.

A procedure in which a thin needle called a spinal needle is put into the lower part of the spinal column to collect cerebrospinal fluid or to give drugs.

A lumpectomy removes a breast tumor along with a margin of surrounding normal tissue while preserving as much of the breast as possible.

Removing a block of nodes tells surgeons how far a cancer has traveled, at the cost of the drainage those nodes provided.

Taking out lymph nodes to learn whether cancer has reached them, an operation now used far more sparingly than it once was.

Removing more tissue does not by itself buy more survival, which is why breast-conserving surgery with radiation matches mastectomy for many early cancers.

A short operation through a small cut above the breastbone, giving direct access to the lymph nodes lying around the windpipe.

Surgery to remove one or more metastases (tumors formed from cells that have spread from the primary tumor).

Removal of the whole breast together with the armpit lymph nodes, sparing the chest muscles the older operation sacrificed.

Surgery to remove most, but not all, of the vulva (the external female genital organs, including the clitoris, vaginal lips, and the opening to the vagina).

A surgical procedure used to treat skin cancer.

A surgical procedure used to treat skin cancer.

A procedure used to mark a small area of abnormal tissue so it can be removed by surgery.

A procedure used to mark a small area of abnormal tissue so it can be removed by surgery.