Paediatric Surgery Department
CHI at Temple Street
Temple Street
Dublin 1
Tel.: (01) 878 4343
Paediatric surgery is the only surgical speciality which is defined by the patient’s age rather than by a specific condition. Paediatric surgery involves the surgery of new born babies, children, adolescents, and young adults.
Paediatric Surgery consists of six main categories:
• Neonatal surgery – this involves the surgical correction of congenital abnormalities in the newborn period
• The surgical management of children with rare conditions that require specialist expertise – some children have unusual conditions (e.g. cystic hygromas or Hirschsprung’s disease which require specialist care
• Management of children who have complex medical conditions – some children have other medical problems that might complicate surgery or make it more hazardous (e.g. poorly controlled diabetes or heart problems) and these children might need to be referred to a specialist centre, like CHI at Temple Street, even for minor surgery if their condition becomes serious
• Paediatric urology – this encompasses surgery on the renal and reproductive tracts of children
• Adolescent and young people’s surgery
• General paediatric surgery – this refers to the surgery of relatively common conditions that do not usually require a specialist unit. These conditions can either be elective e.g. the repair of a hernia, hydrocele, correction of undescended testis, circumcision, or excision of minor lumps. Alternatively, the operations may be emergency procedures e.g. appendicectomy, or torsion of testis
