Hepatorrhaphy

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Surgical repair of a wound or laceration in the liver by stitching the torn tissue back together
2. The stitching together of a damaged liver through a surgical procedure to close an injury
3. A surgical operation in which the liver is sewn up to mend a tear or cut in the organ

Etymology: Hepatorrhaphy is a surgical term for stitching up a wound in the liver. It is built from two Greek-derived parts: "hepato-", from Greek "hepar" (genitive "hepatos"), meaning liver, and "-rrhaphy", from Greek "rhaphē", meaning a seam or suture. The second element is the same one found in words like "herniorrhaphy" (repairing a hernia) and "tenorrhaphy" (sewing up a tendon), so the word is a standard pattern in medical vocabulary: name the organ, then name the repair. The "rhaphē" root has an older life outside medicine. In Greek it meant a stitched seam, and it was used for the join in a ship's timbers and for the seam in a garment, so the surgical sense is a specialised extension of an everyday craft word. Classical Greeks had no use for the compound itself, which is a modern coinage built from classical parts.