A subspecialty (US English) or subspeciality (international English) is a narrow field of professional knowledge/skills within a specialty of trade, and is most commonly used to describe the increasingly more diverse medical specialties. A subspecialist is a specialist of a subspecialty.

In medicine, subspecialization is particularly common in internal medicine, cardiology, neurology and pathology, and has grown as medical practice has:

  1. become more complex, and
  2. it has become clear that a physician's case volume is negatively associated with their complication rate; that is, complications tend to decrease as the volume of cases per physician goes up.[1][2]

See also

Notes and references

  1. ^ McHenry CR (2002). "Patient volumes and complications in thyroid surgery". The British Journal of Surgery. 89 (7): 821–3. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2168.2002.02145.x. PMID 12081730. Full Text Archived 2023-12-30 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ 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. doi:10.1067/msy.2001.117139. PMID 11562662.


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