Surgery

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Modern surgery is able to deal with injuries in 3 ways:
A) The body can be cut open, repaired and diseased tissues removed.
B) Doctors can help repair the body by using drugs and medicines
C) Limbs and organs can be replaced
This high tech surgery has been made possible by a number of key discoveries made since the 1890’s

Improvement 1: X-rays

·	X-rays had been developed in the late 19th century

·	1895 Rontgen had developed an experiment which showed that x-rays could pass through wood, rubber, flesh but not metal.

·	The Curies developed Rontgen’s ideas and discovered that Radium could be used to diagnose cancers.

·	During the first world war x-rays were becoming extremely useful for surgeons trying to remove bullets and shrapnel from bodies.

Improvement 2: Blood Transfusion

·	1901 scientists discovered that there were different blood groups and realised that transfusion only worked if the donor’s blood group was the same as the recievers.

·	Before the 1st world war donors had to lie next to the patient recieving their blood because doctors had no way of storing the blood.

·	During the war more blood was needed this led to the search for more effective ways of storing blood. This led to the discovery that cells could be seperated from the liquid and stored in ice

Improvement 3: Fighting infection
Asceptic surgery was now practices throughout Britain - success rates were much higher than they had been 30 years earlier. However on the battlefield this was difficult to achieve. Soldiers could be infected by bacteria. To prevent this surgeons discovered a solution where they would soak the wound in a saline solution

Other improvements:
New techniques to repair broken bones
Improved skin grafting
Improved surgery of eye, ear, nose and throat
Successfuly attempted brain surgery