4 KudoZ points awarded for this answer. Comment: "This is maybe a little rough on Johanna, but let me explain my reasoning in giving the points to Fantutti. Johanna had this pretty well sewn up until MMUlr came along and threw a new contender in the ring with "transection". The case MMUlr made for "transection" was a pretty good one. And looking back at Johanna's definitions and examples, everything seemed to point to "disruption of continuity" being primarily a term for injuries rather than surgery. So I swung towards "transection". Interestingly, "LEO" gives "transection" as a translation for "Durchtrennung" on its own. However, when I looked up a definition of "transection" in a monolingual English dictionary, I saw that it specifically meant "making a transverse cut". Now I'm not really convinced that the cutting here is transverse. It may well be, but I don't feel confident enough to say that for sure. So I read through all the answers again, and this sentence in Fantutti's answer jumped out at me: "Tissue continuity can be disrupted by injury or deliberately by incision, etc." The key words were "Tissue continuity can be disrupted ... deliberately by incision". That made me feel OK with using this phrase for a surgical context, and that's why I have ultimately given the points to Fantutti. Hope that made sense. But I thank you all very much for your help, which I greatly appreciate. This is definitely a question where I'd split the points if I had the capacity to do so!"