Pediatric Surgery

Pediatric surgery is defined as the diagnostic, operative, and postoperative surgical care for children with congenital and acquired anomalies and diseases, be they developmental, inflammatory, neoplastic or traumatic. The scope of this discipline would focus especially on surgical problems in utero, infancy, childhood, adolescence, and sometimes, young adulthood. Certain diagnoses would require extended involvement of the pediatric surgeon during adulthood as the patient transitions to adult surgeons and providers.

The American Board of Surgery has been granted approval by the American Board of Medical Specialties to award certification in pediatric surgery to those whose specialized training and professional activities primarily encompass the discipline as defined above. It has been agreed that this certificate will not be offered to those who, for practical purposes, limit their activities to the spheres of interest of other approved surgical specialty boards, such as neurologic, orthopaedic, plastic, thoracic and urologic surgery. It is further recognized that such other disciplines limiting their activities to anatomical regions or special systems may include surgery pertinent to those specialties in these age groups.