
Health Dictionary
Reliable, easy-to-read patient information on common medical conditions — written in plain language, free of jargon, and grounded in current evidence. Browse the most frequent diagnoses, understand what they mean for everyday life, and learn which steps and questions help you have a focused conversation with your doctor.
Subspecialty
Introduction
A subspecialty is narrow field within a specialty such as forensic pathology, which is a subspecialty of anatomical pathology.
In medicine subspecialization is particularily common in internal medicine and has grown as medicine has:
- become more complex and
- it has become clear that a physician‘s case volume is negatively associated with their complication rate; that is, complications tend decrease as volume of cases goes up.[1][2]
References
- ↑ McHenry CR (2002). “Patient volumes and complications in thyroid surgery”. The British journal of surgery. 89 (7): 821–3. PMID 12081730. Full Text
- ↑ Birkmeyer JD, Finlayson EV, Birkmeyer CM (2001). “Volume standards for high-risk surgical procedures: potential benefits of the Leapfrog initiative”. Surgery. 130 (3): 415–22. PMID 11562662.
