A surgical procedure involving making an incision into a hernia to access, examine, diagnose, or repair the underlying structures.
From Greek 'hernio-' (hernia) + '-tomy' (a cutting into, from 'tome' meaning section). The term represents early surgical approaches before the development of more sophisticated repair techniques.
Herniotomy was historically important because surgeons had to actually cut open a hernia to see what was inside and fix it—now they can often see everything with a camera and repair it with tiny incisions!
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