Reply #4: It means "pyrrhic victory."

[A_Possum]

Pyrrhic victory, a victory gained at too great a cost; in allusion to the exclamation attributed to Pyrrhus after the battle of Asculum in Apulia (in which he routed the Romans, but with the loss of the flower of his army), ‘One more such victory and we are lost’.

Or, "the operation was a success, but the patient died."

See? Easy.