What is a Pediatric Surgeon?

 If your child has an illness, injury, or disease that requires surgery, a pediatric surgeon has the experience and qualifications to treat your child.

 Surgical problems seen by pediatric surgeons are often quite different from those commonly seen by adult or general surgeons. Special training in pediatric surgery is important.

Pediatric surgeons treat children from the newborn stage through late adolescence. They choose to make pediatric care the core of their medical practice, and the unique nature of medical and surgical care of children is learned from advanced training and experience in practice.

Pediatric surgeons diagnose, treat, and manage children’s surgical needs including:

• Surgery for abnormalities of the groin in childhood and adolescence which include undescended testes, hernias, hydroceles and varicoceles
• Surgical repair of birth defects
• Serious injuries that require surgery (for example, liver lacerations, knife wounds, or gun shot wounds)
• Diagnosis and surgical care of tumors
• Transplantation operations
• Endoscopic procedures (bronchoscopy, esophagogastroduodenoscopy, colonoscopy)
• All other surgical procedures for children