Reviewer: Kathleen S. Romanowski, MD (University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics)
Description: This is a comprehensive review book in outline format designed to help surgical trainees prepare for board exams and help educators in planning their teaching sessions. This is an update of the first edition published in 2008.
Purpose: It is designed as a review of surgical clinical cases, their presentations and management for surgical trainees who is preparing to take their board examinations. The author is very clear that it is not a textbook of surgery. There are many board review books on the market, and the need for this one is not entirely clear, but everyone studies and learns differently, so it may have advantages for some. It does meet the objectives of reviewing the commonly seen and tested surgical cases and their management.
Audience: The author intends this book not only for general surgical trainees preparing for their board examinations, but also for surgical educators to prepare for teaching sessions and for general surgeons as a general reference. However, it would be almost exclusively useful to surgical trainees in preparation for examinations and, in particular, it is probably most suitable for those training and undergoing examinations in India as some of the initial advice seems to be particular to a certain style of examination not common in the U.S. The outline format lends itself well to review but makes it a little difficult to read.
Features: The book covers skin and soft tissue surgery, vascular surgery, head and neck surgery, breast surgery, GI surgery, hepatobiliary surgery, and urology. One of its best features is its comprehensiveness. It covers a wide variety of topics and most aspects of each topic extensively.. The index enhances the ability of the book to be used as a study guide. In addition to the black-and-white pictures throughout the book, there are color plates of the same pictures at the front of the book. However, the quality of these is the book's greatest weakness. The black-and-white images are especially blurry, but the color plates are not much better.
Assessment: This is a useful review book for surgical trainees preparing for board examinations, especially those training in India, but I do not believe it has the broad appeal that the author hopes that it does. For U.S. surgical trainees, there are options that are probably more appropriate for their exams, such as General Surgery Board Review, 4th edition, Scher and Weinberg (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2012), as it combines text and questions for review and is designed for the American Board of Surgery exams.
