The Collaborative International Dictionary
elective surgery \e*lect"ive sur"ger*y\, n. surgery that is not essential, especially surgery to correct a condition that is not life-threatening; surgery that is not required for survival. See also cosmetic surgery.
Wikipedia
Elective surgery or elective procedure (from the Latin eligere, meaning to choose) is surgery that is scheduled in advance because it does not involve a medical emergency. Semi-elective surgery is a surgery that must be done to preserve the patient's life, but does not need to be performed immediately.
By contrast, an urgent surgery is one that can wait until the patient is medically stable, but should generally be done today or tomorrow, and an emergency surgery is one that must be performed without delay; the patient has no choice other than immediate surgery, if they do not want to risk permanent disability or death.
Most surgeries are elective.
Usage examples of "elective surgery".
The memories were still dim, still fragmentary, but there was something about going in for elective surgery .
She'd be interested to see just what sort of elective surgery she'd find.
There would still be dangers in it, and normally I wouldn't do purely elective surgery.
He would have expected a routine beauty, bred out of cheap elective surgery and the relentless Darwinism of fashion, an archetype cooked down from the major media faces of the previous five years.
It was one of the nastiest pieces of elective surgery Case had ever seen.
At that, elective surgery might be a quasi-legitimate way to lever himself off Kyril Island, if things got too desperate before his six months were up.