More recently most get repaired laparoscopically (key-hole surgery
...unless of course, your doctor happens to be Sir Lancelot Spratt in which case the conversation would go something like this:
Spratt: (handing a marker to an intern) "Right. This one's an appendectomy. Mark where you'll make the incision".
Intern makes than elegant mark, about an inch long in the appropriate area.
Spratt: (snatching the pencil off the intern) "No no no no no. We'll have none of that damn keyhole surgery. Make it here...and here." And with that he swishes a blue line on the patient from the groin to the throat and another from hip to hip.
The patient faints.