Surgical methods and technology

• Plastic surgery was developed hugely after WWII, due to the influx of soldiers with disfigured faces from the war
• Open heart surgery was also a huge thing that progressed as a result of the war
• Impact of technology on surgery


  Major technological breakthroughs continued in the field of surgery after the world wars
• Improved anaesthetics


  • Allowed patients to be unconscious for longer, so more complicated operations could be attempted
• Better antiseptics


  • Increased the success rate of difficult operations because they cut down the chances of deadly infection
• Transplant surgery


  • New drugs helped to prevent a patient's body from 'rejecting' their new organs
• Keyhole surgery


  • Using small fibre-optic cameras linked to computers, meant surgeons could perform operations through very small cuts
• Microsurgery


  • Allowed them to magnify the areas they were working on so they could re-join nerves and blood vessels - allowing feeling to be returned to damaged limbs
• Radiation therapy


  Also known as radiotherapy, has been used for the treatment of cancer and other diseases for over 100 years
• About half of all cancer patients will receive some type of radiation therapy during the course of their treatment
• Radiation therapy


  Involves the use of high-energy radiation to shrink tumors and kill cancer cells
• Radiation therapy


  • The radiation may be delivered by a machine outside the body-or it may come from radioactive material placed inside the body near cancer cells
• Radiation therapy


  • Sometimes a radioactive substance such as radioactive iodine is used, which travels in the blood to kill cancer cells
• Surgery using lasers


  Has become increasingly popular since a laser was first used in an eye operation in 1987
• Lasers


  • Still commonly used in eye surgery, but are increasingly used to treat a variety of skin conditions, help clear blocked arteries, remove tumors and ulcers and control bleeding