Meaning of "surgery" revisited

Question

Some "surgery" does not require cutting, apparently.

From an article on CNN.com today:
(quote)
Study: Doctors' office surgeries risky
4:24 PM EDT (2024 GMT)

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) A review of surgeries performed in U.S. doctors' offices has concluded that death or injury is 10 times more likely in that setting than at outpatient clinics, according to a study published on Monday.
Such in-office procedures, ranging from needle biopsies and endoscopy to plastic surgery and even tonsillectomy, have become more common in recent years, the study said.
Some are considered surgeries even though, in cases such as colonoscopy, no incisions are involved.
(/quote)
http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/09/08/health.surgeries.reut/index.html

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Some "surgery" does not require cutting, apparently.[/nq]
AHD seems to have no problem with that. See below.
[nq:1]4:24 PM EDT (2024 GMT) CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) A review of surgeries performed in U.S. doctors' offices has concluded ... years, the study said. Some are considered surgeries even though, in cases such as colonoscopy, no incisions are involved. (/quote)[/nq]
The root seems to have more to do with hands than knives.

surgery noun
plural surgeries
Abbr. surg.
1. The branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment ofinjury, deformity, and disease by manual and instrumental means.
2. A surgical operation or procedure, especially one involving theremoval or replacement of a diseased organ or tissue.
3. An operating room or a laboratory of a surgeon or of a hospital'ssurgical staff.
4. The skill or work of a surgeon.
5. Chiefly British. a. A physician's, dentist's, or veterinarian'soffice. b. The period during which a physician, dentist, or veterinarian consults with or treats patients in the office.
(Middle English surgerie, from Old French, short for cirurgerie, from cirurgie, from Latin chìrúrgia, from Greek kheirourgia, from kheirourgos, working by hand : kheir, hand + ergon, work.)

Usenet · Answer

The inimitable MC (Email Removed) stated on 08 Sep 2003:

We had a discussion about what constituted "surgery" some time back
3 or 4 months ago, I think. No one came up with confirmation thatsurgery did not require some kind of incision. Now that I think about it, though, I should have come up with an orthopedics example because it is possible to set some fractures, including complicated ones like a distal radial fracture of the wrist, without opening up the fractured limb. AHD4's definition is too vague to be particularly helpful, and my medical dictionary isn't much better. According to the first definition below, chiropractors should qualify as back and joint surgeons, but they don't. The issue here seems to be that some surgical procedures simply need to be invasive (as a colonoscopy is) to be called "surgery" and not merely a "surgical procedure".

Meaning of "surgery" revisited

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