Customer Reviews

Essentials of General Surgery

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

 

 

Although Essentials of General Surgery has a place. It is just that "GENERAL". It has limited info about specifics related to procedures. See review titled MUSHY posted by another reviewer. "Essentials of Surgical Specialties" is much more detail oriented.

This thick book contains a good mix and great deal of information, but the writing style is terrible. At every step, the authors go to great lengths to use the most verbose and indulgent language possible. Cut all the fluffy verbiage out and you would have a considerably clearer book that contains 100% of the information in far fewer pages.

I would love to have the time to actually sit down and read this book properly. But a surgery clerkship simply does not afford enough time for that - there are simply not enough hours available when you work 15-17 hour days and were also hoping to eat and sleep. I cannot imagine why some clerkship directors feel that students should read this book. The only saving grace is that there are some 600 practice questions available on the publisher's website that you can access with the scratch-off code included inside the front cover.

This book is very well written and easy to understand. It does not go in great depth like Sabiston, but it is very good for a third year rotation.

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.

This book has a lot of good information, but with the extremely limited time available during surgery clerkship it is too dense to use as a study guide. Even if you are interested in doing surgery I think there would be a better more comprehensive textbook that you could buy to continue to use after clerkship. In 10 weeks I probably opened this book 5 or 6 times.

Hard to read this over the course of a general surgery rotation due to bulk. All in all a decent book to just look up certain things that i have questions on.

I bought this for my 3rd year med school Surgery rotation. It ended up being a bit too much for studying for the exam, but as a resource for reading up on the details of a particular subject, it was great. It also provides very useful diagrams and tables.

Poor book for use on surgery rotation. Poor organization as well as inadequate depth. Surgical Recall and the first AID series books are both far better options

great introductory level surgical text. Would prefer to have purchased surgical text by Schwartz.

This book can be read in a short time and give sufficient knowledge base for surgery clerkship. With that said, I did not like the format of the book as I felt it was too bland. This could be however a result of all the high yeild/bullet format books out on the market that I might be used to. I recommend reading only a select chapters in this book.