Iatrogenic disease in surgery

Abstract

This is a paper read at the 12th Clinical Annual Meeting of the British Medical Association held in Malta. 'Iatrogeny' as a subject heading makes its first appearance in the Index Medicus in Volume 49 for 1951 being included under "Physician's relation to patient." Iatrogenic disease begins to be listed as such in 1963, and every year now sees some one hundred articles appearing, of which roughly one-fourth deal with surgical aspects of the subject. There are several reasons why surgeons should be not only prone to inflict iatrogenic harm but also privileged to learn of and from it, painfully sometimes, salutary always. The author focuses on those aspects where surgery fails as a scientific discipline. The substantial part of this paper is dedicated to iatrogenic diseases within particular surgical scenarios, such as vagotomy, cholecystectomy, gastrectomy, splenectomy, and during transplantation of organs. Though knowledge in particular fields is still rudimentary, there is now little doubt that here too modern medicine will itself provide the prophylaxis or the cure for those ills that doctors inadvertently or unwillingly cause.