The Oxford Textbook of Surgery

This book is the latest (biennial) edition of Way's highly successful textbook on surgery for medical students, house staff and attending physicians. The content of the book is sophisticated enough to be useful to seasoned house staff who need an up-to-date and quick reference book, but medical students and interns will particularly benefit from its focused and wide-ranging array of topics. Similarly, house staff in medical fields who wish to extend and review their surgical knowledge will find it very useful; experienced surgeons will most likely find the material too simple to be of much use, though it may be helpful for board review. The book is organized into 48 chapters, plus appendices and a detailed index. The diverse surgical topics are handled in equally rigorous fashion. Roughly the first third of the book is devoted to general surgical considerations, with chapters on such important topics as preand post-operative care, anesthesia, fluid and electrolyte management, special medical problems in surgical patients and surgical metabolism and nutrition. The remaining two-thirds of the book is an overview of general surgery and surgical subspecialties such as neurosurgery, plastic surgery, otolaryngology and orthopedics. The emphasis is (as the title suggests) on diagnosis and general treatment considerations, rather than on detailed surgical anatomy or specific approaches and techniques. The style tends to the theoretical rather than practical, and therefore, this book is not appropriate for someone seeking a simple comparative study or a compilation of surgical procedures. For a concise and readable introduction to surgical thinking, however, there is no better manual of modern diagnostic and treatment options. Chris Janson Medical Student Yale University School of Medicine