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Positioning Patients for Surgery By Chris Servant & Shaun Purkiss Greenwich Medical Media ISBN 1841100528 £22.50
This book is one that I suppose most surgeons feel has already been written but in fact is long overdue. Like most good ideas it is simple but certainly fills a need in that it places within the covers of a slim volume most of the salient information required by any member of theatre staff who has anything to do with the care of patients while positioning them for surgery.
The format of the book is very clear. There are many useful illustrations. Quite a few of the illustrations are repeated but this is helpful in that it reduces the need to move between pages to see the illustrations.
The book is well laid out with a clear progression from the theoretical considerations of patient positioning and the extremely important medico-legal considerations, covering relevant subjects such as access for anaesthetists, the principles of tourniquet and diathermy and thrombo-embolic prophylaxis.
Thereafter, general surgical approaches are covered in a brief chapter over seventeen pages. The rest of the book covers orthopaedic approaches that are rather more complex and involve the use of different positions as well as more complex pieces of theatre table equipment.
The final section is the useful list of patient positions and the surgical approaches that might make use of these positions.
Overall, I found this book a very useful volume, which brings into one place a variety of topics, which will be of use to operating department personnel, theatre nurses and surgeons. In particular, basic surgical trainees will find this a useful volume.
Mr I K Ritchie Department of Orthopaedics & Trauma Stirling Royal Infirmary Stirling U.K.
Staging Laparoscopy Edited by P. Hohenberger & K. Conlon Springer Verlag Germany 2002 ISBN 3540656324 £63.00
This is a very well written book about the contribution of laparoscopy in staging of intra-abdominal malignancies. The authors are both internationally renowned for their expertise in surgical oncology and more specifically in staging a minimally invasive approach. The text of the book also covers some of the controversies related to laparoscopy in the management of intra-abdominal malignancies such as port site metastases.
The remaining chapters are more specific looking at the role of laparoscopic ultrasound in staging both tubular and solid organ disease.
The final chapters also cover some of the pelvic malignancies including gynaecological cancers and urological tumours. This textbook should be in every surgical unit with an interest in advanced laparoscopic surgery.
Professor A. Darzi London U.K.
Gastric Substitutes Edited by J. Metzger, F. Harder & M. von Flue Springer Verlag Germany 2003 ISBN 3540411046 £56.00
This book comprises 146 pages and is essentially the background reading and results of two trials performed by the authors, representing more the type of work expected for submission of a thesis rather than a critical appraisal of gastric substitutes. It is clear from the introductory chapters that the use of the ileo-caecal segment is the author’s choice and the text is tailored in a biased fashion towards this.
The text is over-referenced with 656 references for what amounts to a very small amount of text and a relatively small subject. The work is therefore disjointed and difficult to read. The crux of the thesis is outlined in chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 5 details the outcome of 32 patients undergoing ileo-caecal inter-positional grafting following resection for gastric or distal oesophageal carcinomas in the author’s Unit. This lasts for 40 pages but the trial and results could have been more effectively reported in a standard journal article with the reader struggling to maintain interest.
Chapter 6 reports on the results of 30 pigs undergoing surgery. Again, this chapter is excessively long with no detail spared; ranging from how to train a pig using apples to standing quiet in a suspended sling twice a week. It goes on to point out the finer issues of porcine anaesthesia. The resolution on many of the photographs is extremely poor.
It is difficult to know whom this book would appeal to. It amounts to little more than one Unit’s recent research on a very specific topic and is not a reference book. As a result, and considering the price, I cannot recommend its purchase to readers of this journal.
Mr S.M. Griffin Royal Victoria Infirmary Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, U.K.
Pathways in Surgery Third Edition Edited by Michael Hobsley & Paul B. Boulos Edward Arnold Ltd ISBN 0340631864 £29.99
‘Pathways in Surgery’ is to a conventional textbook what a thesaurus is to a dictionary - so says Professor Hobsley in the preface to the first edition. The book is now into its third edition - a fact testifying to its success. Pathways is a buzz word these days, e.g. integrated care pathways. The book admirably lives up to its title.
Algorithms abound - virtually every pathological condition is described in the form of a flowchart. This makes the subject easy to understand; sections that deal with treatment in the charts are in bold, an admirable way of ‘hitting the nail on the head’. The text is illustrated with excellent line diagrams supplemented with good x-ray pictures. The clinical photographs (with the exception of two colour plates on ophthalmology) would have been better in colour although I appreciate that colour photographs would make the book more expensive. This is not a criticism but rather a suggestion to be considered for the next edition, especially as the present book is such good value for money.
With surgical specialties such as ENT and eyes also being covered, the book is ideal for the medical student doing the Final MB in Surgery - an all-in-one publication for physical findings, differential diagnosis, pathology and treatment. At the beginning of each chapter the aims are outlined in a box and with highlights detailed at the end - an innovative way to re-enforce the subject so that when it comes to preexamination revision, a look at the highlights will quickly jog one’s memory of the text.
The book is in two parts, non-emergencies and emergencies. I found this demarcation unnecessary and artificial as most conditions can present both ways. This causes repetition. Perhaps this style of presentation should be looked on as a novel format.
Notwithstanding this minor criticism, I feel that this book is a must for the clinical medical student. The Basic Surgical Trainee doing the MRCS will
.nd this book a very useful adjunct to revision just prior to the Final Assessment (Part II) having already used standard textbooks for the core reading. The chapter on intensive care is so comprehensive that it might just be enough for the MRCS examination.
The clinical medical student should not be without this book whilst the Basic Surgical Trainee would do well to go through it shortly before the examination. I, for one, will certainly use it as a surgical thesaurus.
Mr P. K. Datta Caithness General Hospital Wick U.K.
More Than Skin Deep: A Remarkable Life Story by Costel Vasilescu Tevia ISBN 0646418866 $22.95
This autobiography is well written and a pleasure to read. The author began life in prosperous pre-war Romania and ended his career as a consultant in plastic surgery in Queensland, Australia. There is little about the techniques or whys and wherefores of plastic surgery but you will learn much about the history of Romania and the life of its people who in ten years went through periods of monarchy, fascist dictatorship and communism.
Vasilescu’s time in medical school and his early post-graduate career were spent in the time of communist dictatorship and he relates how politics invaded into medical practice and continuous indoctrination created a climate of mistrust. He concludes that although fascism and communism appear to be at opposite ends of the political spectrum, the effects of their totalitarian governments on the population are no different.
By a lucky chance, probably because of a joint authorship of a paper published in the British Journal of Plastic Surgery, he received an invitation from A.B. Wallace to join his unit in Edinburgh for six months. At the end of this time, he decided to stay in Britain despite attempts by the authorities in Romania to make him return home.
The remainder of the book describes Vasilescu’s efforts to obtain the necessary qualifications to finish his training in plastic surgery and in this he received much help from A.B. Wallace and his colleagues in Edinburgh. That he finally achieved his goal shows what can be gained with talent and hard work; but you also need good friends and a bit of luck!
Mr I.F.K. Muir Leicester U.K.