The operation of drilling a tubular Neighborhood of a Knot in and then gluing in a solid Torus so that its meridian curve goes to a -curve on the Torus boundary of the Knot exterior. Every compact connected 3-Manifold comes from Dehn surgery on a Link in .
See also Kirby Calculus
References
Adams, C. C. The Knot Book: An Elementary Introduction to the Mathematical Theory of Knots. New York:
W. H. Freeman, p. 260, 1994.