Ian Reight: Bigger Incisions Don’t Mean Better Surgery
The general surgeon says a common belief about surgery, that a larger incision means a more thorough operation, gets the comparison backward.
A Belief Worth Questioning
Maine, USA, Oct 07, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Patients often assume that a bigger cut means a surgeon did more work, or did it more carefully. Ian Reight, a general surgeon who leads robotic surgery cases in his practice, says that assumption is wrong more often than it is right.
“Size and thoroughness are not the same thing,” Reight says. “A long incision can still miss what matters. A small one can give a surgeon exactly the access they need, if the approach is right for that patient.”
Reight has spent his career in both traditional open surgery and newer minimally invasive and robotic approaches. He says the choice between ...
