Procedure and Surgery Terms

A nephrectomy is surgery to remove all or part of a kidney, performed through several different approaches depending on how much tissue must be removed.

Pressure rather than pain is the danger, since urine that cannot escape backs up and injures the kidney quickly.

Surgery to remove a kidney and its ureter.

A procedure in which medicine is injected directly into or around a nerve or into the spine to block pain.

A type of surgery that attempts to save the nerves near the tissues being removed.

NES applies small electrical impulses to weak or paralyzed muscles to help maintain strength, circulation, and range of motion.

Electrical pulses that make a muscle work when the brain's own signal is too weak or cannot get through.

OCT is an imaging technique that uses light waves to produce cross-sectional pictures of tissue, most familiar as a routine eye exam of the retina.

Omentectomy removes the omentum, a fatty membrane that drapes over the abdominal organs, most often performed during surgery for ovarian or gastrointestinal cancer.

Oophorectomy is the surgical removal of one or both ovaries, performed for conditions such as ovarian masses, cancer risk, or disease.

An operation to remove all or part of the colon through a long incision made in the wall of the abdomen.

An operation to remove part or all of the prostate gland through an incision in the lower abdomen or perineum (the area between the anus and scrotum).

Surgery to remove part or all of an organ or a tumor and nearby lymph nodes.

Surgery to remove one or both testicles.

Surgery to remove one or both testicles.

An operation to create an opening (a stoma) from an area inside the body to the outside.

Removing part or all of a gland that quietly does two unrelated jobs, so what is taken decides which of them stops.

Two jobs in one puncture: draining the fluid eases the pressure of a swollen abdomen, while a sample of it explains why the fluid gathered.

An operation aimed at a gland most people cannot name, usually done because one of the four has grown a benign lump.

Surgery to cut the parts of the vagus nerve that cause gastric acid to be made in the stomach.