Pediatric Surgery Patient Procedures

The Division of Pediatric General and Thoracic Surgery at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh encourages parents and guardians to be active participants in their child’s surgical care journey.

Pediatric Surgery Procedures

The most common procedures we perform are below. Please read this information and share it with your child in an age-appropriate way.

• Cytoreductive surgery (CRS) — An operation to reduce the number and size of cancerous tumors in the abdomen (belly). It is also called debulking surgery.
• Gastroesophageal reflux repair or “wrap” surgery — Surgery to correct gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). The wrap tightens or narrows the opening of the esophagus where it enters the stomach.
• Hypermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) — A type of cancer therapy often used with cytoreductive surgery (CRS). It delivers heated chemotherapy into the abdominal cavity after surgeons remove all visible cancer. HIPEC can help destroy any cancer that remains after CRS.
• Inguinal “groin” hernia repair surgery — An operation to close up the opening in the abdominal (belly) wall near the groin.
• Intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI) — An imaging technique that uses a special tracer dye. IMI helps surgeons see and remove as many cancer cells as possible during cytoreductive surgery.
• Laparoscopic appendectomy — An operation to remove the appendix when it has become inflamed.
• Liver tumor resection — This surgery is the most common treatment for removing tumors that develop in a child’s liver. It removes a part or section of a diseased liver, leaving as much of the healthy liver as possible.
• Neuroblastoma surgery — Surgery to remove a neuroblastoma. Neuroblastomas are cancerous solid tumors that develop in the nervous systems of babies and young children.
• Nuss Procedure — A minimally invasive surgical procedure to treat pectus excavatum. Pectus excavatum is a malformation of the sternum (breastbone) that can cause heart and lung symptoms.
• Partial nephrectomy — This surgery removes the part of a kidney that contains a small- to medium-sized tumor, while preserving some or all of the normal part of the kidney. It is also called nephron-sparing surgery.
• Pectus excavatum repair surgery — Surgery to fix the shape of the sternum (breastbone). It ensures that the inward curve of the chest does not squeeze the lungs and heart.
• Pulmonary (lung) metastases resection — Pulmonary metastases are cancer growths that originated somewhere else in the body and have spread to the lungs. Lung resection removes the lung tumor and all cancer cells from the lung while preserving as much healthy tissue as possible.
• Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) — An SLNB is a procedure to locate and remove the sentinel lymph node. The sentinel lymph node is the node or group of nodes closest to the original tumor. In an SLNB, the sentinel node is removed and sent to the lab to be tested for cancer.
• Umbilical hernia repair surgery — Surgery to repair an opening in the area underneath the belly button, or umbilicus.
• Undescended testicle (orchiopexy) repair surgery — Surgery done to move a young boy’s testicles from his abdomen, or belly, into the scrotum.