Some surgical terms may require further explanation. The words ‘incision’ and ‘resection’ come from the Latin and mean literally ‘cut into’ and ‘take away’. ‘Trauma’ comes from Greek and means ‘injury’ or ‘wound’. A trauma can be psychological, in the sense of suffering a trauma after a bad experience, but in surgery it means that something is physically damaged. ‘Indication’ means ‘the reason for an operation’, while a ‘complication’ is an undesired development or a calamity. Other terms can be found in the Glossary at the back of the book.
