Essentials of General Surgery

We all know about Lawrence's Essentials book. Lawrence provided a great review of physiology, wound healing, and perioperative care all while keeping the depth appropriate to a medical student. Students are often asked about anatomy relevant to the procedure at hand but some of the questioning from attendings has to do with the procedure itself. The section at the end on surgical procedures helps orient you to some of the most common cases seen on a general surgery rotation. It is in your best interest to not only be up on the anatomy of the case, but the procedure details as well. This book provides a general overview of anatomy, physiology, as well as relevant complications of each type of case . It is organized by systems, as most texts are.

You don't have to be a doctor to get a kick out of this book. Peter Lawrence isn't a bad writer at all, and his colleagues who do different articles with him and help making up the questions and answers (many of them multiple choice, including some surprising zingers to see if you're awake) are also fairly competent at writing and know how to make a dry subject alive. HRecently, when I was in the hospital and my doctors were trying to figure out what kind of procedure I should be having (to correct a leaky heart), a friend brought me this book to read while I tried to make the leaden hours go by quicker. Its attractive cover and easy-to-follow medical style convinced him that the more I knew about what might be happening to me, the better my mind would be able to cushion the shocks. You know what? My fingers quickly found themselves wrapped around the book's four corners and the hands of the clock fairly sped by as I acquainted myself with all sorts of interesting operations, from vacsular to gastric and even into plastic surgery, which by the way isn't as simple and brainless as you would think! I'm impressed by how difficult this vanity procedure is. However, surgery isn't child's play and the newbie to medical terms will probably get bogged down just trying to figure out what part of the body Dr. L is talking about from page to page. It will be a long time before I feel confident enough to pursue the next volume in this series, ESSENTIALS OF SURGICAL SPECIALTIES. It all turned out well, and with this book on my shelf when visitors come by they sometimes ask if at one time when I was young I trained as a surgeon, only to wash out. The book's cover painting is of course by Thomas Eakins, it is his famous painting of THE GROSS CLINIC, painted at a time when surgery was undergoing rapid transformation, at a time right on the cusp of change. Of course you can see that none of the surgeons working on the poor patient are wearing scrubs nor any kind of hygienic clothes. They are all in street clothes and as you can tell, germs were still a vague concept to the Philadelphia surgeons of the day! In your library, this volume should be an essential! Even if you have no interest in medicine, either personal or professional.

This book is just the right length for an aspiring surgeon to read during their surgery clerkship. If surgery isn't your bag then it's probably a bit much but is excellent as a reference for your patient's surgical issues. When compared against many of the larger texts such as Sabiston it doesn't seem to be missing much of the important information that I needed to write review papers or add to informal presentations. But it is much cheaper and less bulky, and thus ideal for medical students. I used this book along with the "Essentials of Surgical Specialties" volume.

A perfect concise text for medical students on their surgery rotation. This book helped me do better on my surgery shelf than I have on any other shelf exam. Read the whole thing and take notes as you do.

I inititally bought this text in my second year of medical school. It was both an exceptionally detailed text and also a good reference on a wide variety of subjects. I have continued to use it into my surgical residency and expect to do so until I finish. My only detractions are that on occasion it is too densely packed with information, and that the section on peptic ulcer disease and the surgical treatment of the same is a little dated. Otherwise, any topic that a student needs to know about on a general surgical service is _well_ covered by this text.