Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Laparoscopy
/ˌlæpəˈrɒskəpi/noun
Surgery or examination inside the abdomen carried out through small incisions using a lighted telescope.
The Greek roots
λαπάρα
lapára
flank, soft side
σκοπεῖν
skopeîn
to look at, examine
Literally: “flank viewing”
The story of the word
Greek λαπάρα was the soft flank between the ribs and the hip, the part of the body that gives when you press it. Georg Kelling put a cystoscope into a dog's inflated abdomen in Berlin in 1901, and Hans Christian Jacobaeus did the same to human patients in Stockholm nine years later. The name kept the Greek anatomy even though surgeons now usually go in at the navel.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- early 20th century
Same family
laparotomyendoscopehoroscopeskeptic
In a sentence
The gallbladder came out by laparoscopy and she was home the same evening.
Three small scars are all that laparoscopy leaves behind.