resection

Imagine a skilled gardener tending to a rose bush. If they find a diseased branch, they do not just ignore it. They carefully cut that part away so the rest of the plant has a better chance to stay healthy. That gives you the basic idea of resection. It usually means surgically removing part of an organ or other body tissue.

You will see this word most often in medicine. A bowel resection removes a damaged or diseased part of the intestine. A lung resection removes part of the lung, often because of cancer or another serious problem. The idea is careful removal: take out the harmful part while leaving as much healthy tissue as possible.

Resection usually refers to the surgical removal of part of an organ, a tumor, or other body tissue. It is a clinical word, but it describes an important and often life-saving procedure used for problems such as cancer, severe injury, or badly damaged tissue. The aim is to cut out the part causing trouble while saving as much healthy, working tissue as possible.

The word comes from the Latin resecare, meaning "to cut off." In medicine, it can apply to many parts of the body. A surgeon might remove part of the intestine, part of the liver, part of a lung, or even part of a bone. The procedure is often named for the body part involved, as in "bowel resection" or "liver resection."

Outside medicine, resection also has a technical meaning in surveying and navigation. There, it means finding your position by using measurements taken from known points or landmarks. This use is much less common in everyday English than the medical one.

So when you hear resection, you should usually think of careful surgical removal, not total removal of the whole organ. The word carries the idea of taking away one part in order to protect, repair, or better understand the whole.