Surgeon

In medicine, a surgeon is a person who performs surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such to remove a diseased organ or to repair a tear or breakage. Surgeons may be medical doctors, dentists, podiatrists or veterinarians, however most commonly the word surgeon refers to a medical doctor. In earlier times, they were also people trained solely in removing bladder stones, but at the present day specialised practitioners would have first been trained in one of the professions already mentioned.

Minimally invasive procedures such as the procedures of interventional radiology are sometimes described as "minimally invasive surgery." The field traditionally described as interventional neuroradiology, for instance, is increasingly called neurointerventional surgery. Surgery (from the Greek: cheirourgikē, via Latin: chirurgiae, meaning "hand work") is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, to help improve bodily function or appearance, or sometimes for some other reason.

An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical procedure, operation, or simply surgery. In this context, the verb operating means performing surgery. The adjective surgical means pertaining to surgery; e.g. surgical instruments or surgical nurse. The patient or subject on which the surgery is performed can be a person or an animal. A surgeon is a person who performs operations on patients.

Persons described as surgeons are commonly medical practitioners, but the term is also applied to podiatric physicians, dentists and veterinarians. Surgery can last from minutes to hours, but is typically not an ongoing or periodic type of treatment. The term surgery can also refer to the place where surgery is performed, or simply the office of a physician, dentist, or veterinarian.