The present and future status of pediatric surgery

Abstract

The pioneering work of a few surgeons in 1960s made a small bud of pediatric surgery in Japan, which grew rapidly afterward and by the 1980s pediatric surgery was recognized as a specialtiy and independent pediatric surgical departments were established in several universities and childre's hospitals. A number of difficult problems, however, are currently confronting the field of pediatric surgery, such as a bottle-neck of pediatric surgeons as the results of overproduciton of trained pediatric surgeons, decreased number of patients due to decreased birth rate, and the rapid development of the organ specialties ; i. e., urology, neurologic-, plastic-, micro-surgery, transplantation, traumatilolgy and oncologist invading into the territory of pediatric surgery. These problems were reviewed and some ways of overcoming these problems were proposed with reference to the views from 16 affiriated pediatric surgeons from 15 countireis in the world.