An operation, or a surgery, is a specific mechanic intervention upon a part of the body for diagnosis or treatment.
Surgeries are commonly classified depending on their urgency and the chance of curing the patient.
Depending on the urgency , there are the following types of operations.
1. Urgent, i.e. the ones to be performed immediately or within a few hours following the patient's admission.
2. Emergency, i.e. the ones that should be done within several days after the patient's admission.
3. Scheduled, i.e. the ones performed according to schedule (the date of the operation is not fixed).
Each operation may be either radical or palliative:
1. Radical, i.e. the one intended to extirpate the disease, usually malignant, completely.
2. Palliative, i.e. the one intended to relieve symptoms without hope of cure.
An operation can also be a one-stage or multistage surgery. Each step of a one-stage operation follows the previous one in succession, while a multi-stage operation consists of a series of surgeries performed on different days.
Current methods of anaesthesia and intensive care allow for two or more operations be done simultaneously in the same patient.
Microsurgery requires that the object to operate on be magnified at least 3- to 40-fold, which is achieved with special glasses or a microscope and that special microsurgical instruments and the thinnest sutural strips be used.
Endoscopic (e.g. laparoscopic, thoracoscopic) operations are performed with special devices.
Endovascular operations are closed intravascular interventions done under the X-ray control, e.g. widening a narrowed vessel with a special catheter; removing artificial occlusion of the vessel, or embolization; elimination of intravascular atheromata, etc.