Customer Reviews

Essentials of General Surgery

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lawrence's book tends to be controversial; some students sing its paens while others think its best use is in the recycle bin. I purchased this book with an interest in surgery and was overall disappointed. It does a decent job of covering all aspects of a surgical disease (pathophys, workup, treatment), but overall it's a mess. When I wanted a definitive answer, it felt like Lawrence would say do this, but some physicians do this, new research states this, etc. When you take a shelf exam, you can only give one answer. Lawrence made things hazy. This is how it work in the real world at times, but the real world also demands a strict answer. Next step is ____, next thing to order is ____.

The book is organized like most surgical texts; it starts off with nonsurgical chapters on fluids & electrolytes, nutrition, etc. While necessary, they're extremely boring and things start to sound the same (hypokalemia vs hypomag vs etc). First Aid and NMS tend to make better deliniations. After reading Lawrence, I still didn't have a good idea how to preop/postop a patient (each case is different, but there are some generalities or bread and butter cases), nor could I easily reference this book for quick answers.

I spent a lot of time wading through this book, but in the end I don't know if I learned much because everything became vague or nonmemorable. Each chapter has some multiple choice questions (weak) and a final Q&A oral review (good).

The surgery clerkship can be exhausting and time intensive. I wish I had spent my time with a different text. The surgery shelf exam smacked me a good one.

A better option would be to just memorize Surgical Recall thoroughly and do several question books or case scenarios (NMS Casebook). Surgeons for several years have been reading Recall. The Lawrence text I used was the second edition from around 2000, I believe, which is pretty old in medicine. Thank God they finally made a new one, but I doubt there's an overall improvement in the body of the text.

You might get more out of this book if you focus purely on it, take rigorous notes, review it again and again, etc. but it will be difficult to find time for this, and in the end, your thoughts on how to work up an upper GI bleed might just turn to mush.

This is an option for third year medical students who want a brief and readable review book in a prose rather than bullet point style. However it is by no means comprehensive and more in depth resources such as a surgery textbook should be utilized for presentations or for detailed investigation. It is suitable for the third year clerkship level.

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.

This book has the information you need for the clerkship and is easy to get through (most chapters, anyway). However it's not a good prep book if you're studying for the shelf: it's too long, and material tested on the shelf is different. Most of the shelf is medicine, which is not emphasized in the book at all. That said, I still think it was a very good introductory surgery text.

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.

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.

This book is so long and wordy, It's a great reference for surgical topics, but so hard to read. It is not a good review book, and i would say not a book to read during your rotation in surgery since you probably wouldn't have enough free time to read the entire thing. It is a good book, don't get me wrong, but I find it's too much for 3rd yr rotation material.

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.