Characters have come and gone on Grey's Anatomy but many doctors at Seattle's Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital have remained, going into the show's 10th season and 200th episode on Oct. 10.

The number of characters that have been killed off the show exceed the numbers of seasons the ABC series has been on television: Izzie Steven's love interest Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), Dr. George O'Malley (T.R. Knight), Chief Webber's wife Adele (Loretta Devine), Meredith Grey's mother Ellis (Kate Burton), and intern Heather Brooks (Tina Majorino), to name a few.

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Other characters have merely been written off one way or another. The two most famous ones are Dr. Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) and Dr. Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington). Show veteran Ellen Pompeo, who plays central character Meredith Grey, recently opened up to the New York Post about the dramatic exits.

"Hurt feelings, combined with instant success and huge paychecks started things spinning out of control," she said. "The crazier things got, as I watched all the tumult with Isaiah and then the Katie thing, I started to focus on the work."

"Maybe it is my Boston, blue-collar upbringing," the actress continued. "I just tried to not pay attention to all the noise around me."

Heigl's departure was "tough," Pompeo admitted.

"You could understand why she wanted to go -- when you're offered $12 million a movie and you're only 26," she said. "But Katie's problem is that she should not have renewed her contract. She re-upped, took a big raise and then tried to get off the show. And then her movie career did not take off."

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Actress Sandra Oh, who plays Cristina Yang, will exit show at the end of season 10 and Patrick Dempsey hinted in August that he may be ready to leave the ABC series as well.

Grey's Anatomy airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.

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