The Department of Pediatric Surgery is a specialty involving treatment of surgical patients from newborn babies to adolescents under the age of sixteen.

Children are separately managed because they need to receive customized treatment depending on their development stages and physical/physiological changes at each age.

Since the Department of Pediatric Surgery performs as extensive surgical procedures and treatments as diseases handled in the Department of Pediatrics, more specialized medical skills are required.

Especially various congenital malformations of newborn babies and many surgical diseases that often occur at this age require accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment customized to each disease.
Therefore AMC makes ceaseless efforts to provide the best treatment by linking with the Fetal Treatment Center of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Neonatal Incentive Care Unit.
For instance, congenital hiatal hernia is classified as the disease with high mortality rates, but its survival rates increase as surgery is performed after stabilizing patients with active treatments such as HFV (frequency oscillatory ventilation), nitrogen oxide, ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) in the Neonatal Incentive Care Unit immediately after birth.

Besides, we not only perform surgeries for removing various types of benign and malign tumor in children, but also provide overall treatment of diverse diseases that occur in children’s gastrointestinal system and hepatobiliary system. In addition, we treat pediatric thyroid and breast diseases and perform herniotomy, cardiac catheterization, and peritoneal dialysis catheter insertion.

In this way we involve surgeries in diverse fields, so we closely cooperate with other departments and continue research for the best medical services and development.

In September 1996, the day surgery system was introduced supported by the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine. This allows healthy children aged over three to visit the hospital and undergo surgery in the morning, then discharge about 4-5 hours after the operation in the evening, which was well-received by patients and their guardians. Even those under the age of three can receive the day surgery if they don’t need much preoperative preparations.

Since 1999, laparoscopic surgery was also introduced in children. Moreover diverse surgical interventions are applied to the treatment of pediatric patients: for instance appendectomy, ovarian cystectomy, liver biopsy, abdominal tumor biopsy, cholecystotomy, gastroesophageal anti-reflux surgery, common bile duct cystectomy, thoracoscopic diaphragmatic hernia repair surgery, etc.

People seem to get less interested in children as the birth rate is going down. However as the number of children decreases, parents rather tend to want the best for their children. The development of surgery also produces a number of breakthroughs which can be applied to the treatment of children. The Department of Pediatric Surgery at AMC Children’s Hospital offer cutting-edge medical services in a familial atmosphere.