Gynecologic Surgery

Candace Cooley’s operating experience takes in hysterectomy by vaginal and abdominal approaches, laparoscopic surgery and hysteroscopy, and this index gathers the entries on those operations and their history. The Office on Women’s Health defines hysterectomy as surgery to remove the uterus, sometimes with the fallopian tubes and ovaries, and lists fibroids, heavy or unusual bleeding, uterine prolapse, endometriosis, adenomyosis and cancer among the reasons for it, alongside other treatments that may be tried first.¹

Smaller procedures look inside rather than remove. The NHS describes hysteroscopy as passing a thin tube with a small camera into the womb to find the cause of symptoms such as unexplained bleeding, and notes that polyps and fibroids can be removed and tissue samples taken during it.² All of this rests on anesthesia, which is younger than it seems. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia recounts that before ether surgeons almost never operated on the chest or abdomen, and that the dentist T. G. Morton used ether during a surgical demonstration at Harvard Medical School in 1846, after which it spread through America and Europe.³

The four entries are The Hysterectomy, Hysteroscopy and Endometrial Polyps, From Ether to Enhanced Recovery and Laparoscopy, From Kurt Semm to Robotic Systems.