[Symptomatic surgery]

We can distinguish between symptomatic and aetiological surgery. Symptomatic surgery includes operations, which remove the symptoms of a disease or at least palliate them albeit without removing their underlying pathology. On the other hand aetiological surgery means the curative removal of a pathology. It can be argued that any type of a surgery is symptomatic in nature, but that a part of the symptomatic surgery is curative as well. In addition to symptomatic and curative surgery, we also apply prophylactic surgery. Prophylactic surgery constitutes a controverse chapter. The question is whether an indication for prophylactic surgery does exist. One can argue, that it is difficult to improve the life of a well being patient by operating on him. On the other hand the question is whether it would not be more intelligent to improve the condition of a patient by removing the pathological aspects before symptoms appear. In addition, a pathological situation should not be allowed to progress to the stage where neither surgery nor conservative treatment offer sufficient benefit to patients.