To the Editor:—
The answer given by William B. Smith, JD, to a question about performance of surgical operation by residents (209:947, 1969) may be legally correct but, in my own view, is out of date in its restrictiveness.No surgeon performs major operations by himself. It requires the participation of a number of team members. The responsibility for surgery performed falls upon the surgeon contracted with by the patient. Specific responsibilities during the technical procedure are delegated to members of a surgical team by the surgeon. He cannot prepare sutures and instruments, hold retractors, place the suture in a heart valve, run the extracorporeal circuit, administer blood, give anesthesia, do a frozen section, tie the sutures, suction a wound clean, hold parts for dissection, take operative x-ray films and interpret them, and all the other obligations implicit in a successful operation. What he can do is direct all