Customer Reviews

Lange Q&A Surgery, Fifth Edition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Please do not buy this book. I honestly feel that the company should recall this book. Chapter five alone contains more than 40 grammatical and or factual errors. If you wish to stick with an Appleton and Lange book I highly suggest obtaining a copy of the fourth edition(printed before the passing of the original editor in chief) as it contains far fewer errors. It amazes me that this book even made it to the printers.

I'm surprised of the 1-star reviews on here. I originally bought this book based on other med students' recommendations. I thought the book was excellent in preparing me for the Surgery shelf. Compared to Pretest, I thought the questions in this book was better representative of the actual shelf style type of questions. Yes, there are errors in the book, but these are extremely minor and very obvious (ie. Answer section writes choice B but actually meant A, and it was obvious because the explanation still correlates with choice A). I mainly used this for my practice questions (vs Pretest), coupled with NMS Surgery Case book, and I received a score of 1+ standard deviation above the national mean for the shelf.

lots of errors/poor editing in this "thoroughly updated and reviewed" 5th edition. even worse are the poor (and very brief) explanations that don't make sense and don't even address the questions. the cover touts "rationales for correct and incorrect answers", but this simply isn't true. just flip to the answers and you'll see that each explanation is incredibly short compared to other books and most of the answer choices are not mentioned.

i had a hard time figuring out which question resource to use during my surgery clerkship. both this book and pretest got mediocre/poor reviews, and there aren't any other dedicated surgery question books out there that i know of. i ended up using the 100 surgery q's from the kaplan qbook for step 2ck and the 200 surgery q's from blueprints q+a for step 2. so far, i think the blueprints questions are the most educational.

Ditto to the complete lack of editing. Why even print something that is obviously still in the draft stage? Try some other product.

Unbelievably, almost criminally bad. If I could rate it with negative stars, I would. The errata is even useless.

Here's my favorite mistake, from the (arguably most important) pretest portion (this is question 51):

What is true of pepsinogen?

A) Is a condition in which it is safe to leave microscopic disease at the cut edges
B) Shows favorable response to radiotherapy
C) Has a 5-year survival rate of about 12%
D) Rates are increased in patients with duodenal ulcer
E) Is a condition in which extensive removal of drainage lymph nodes should not be done
F) Is associated with hyperchlorhydria
G) Is associated with diverticulitis

For those of you scratching your heads as much as I, the reported answer is C.

This book has so many errors it is incredibly frustrating. There are full pages that are completely useless due to errors. Even when there doesn't appear to be an error, I am having a hard time trusting this book!

It took me a long while deciding to purchase this question book because of the 1 star ratings here on Amazon. However, being in dire need of more surgery questions to prepare for exam and after exhausting other available sources, I bought it used from Amazon for a few dollars. The questions are very good and relevant for the exam. Even if several have missed words or some absent lab data, you can still figure it out (understand on what they test you in that question) and answer it. I also observed that it went very well with FA for Surgery Clerkship in terms of content and organization. I liked the questions and they helped me a lot polishing my surgery knowledge. If you can pass the awful editing, it's worth it.

I have to agree with the other reviewers who complain about the unacceptable number of factual and grammatical (as well as spelling and typographical) errors that permeate this book. DO NOT BUY. I have written the authors to complain. In my opinion, this book should be recalled.

Examples include one question asking you to identify "what is true of pepsinogen?" which then has 7 answer choices that treat pepsinogen as some kind of oncologic disease (A: It is a condition in which it is safe to leave microscopic disease at the cut edges. B: It shows a favorable response to radiotherapy) rather than a pro-enzyme involved in normal digestion!
I also liked one question/answer pair that says that a good way to prevent surgical infections is NOT to shave off body hair before surgery.
Then there are the numerous references to "omplications" of surgical procedures, as well as is/if/it switches.

Did no one proofread this book?????

The publishers should be ashamed of themselves for printing a book with this many errors in it. Numerous questions are unreadable due to grammatical errors, omitted words, and misspellings. Many, many answers have incorrect letters in the answer section, explain more than one answer choice as correct, or are simply based on incorrect factual information. The only advantage to this book is that you learn a lot by looking at alternative sources to verify the terrible information in it.

How is this book even for sale? I bought it thinking it would be comparable to other practice Q books, but how can anyone possibly learn with all the editing errors, non-explained answers, flat-out wrong answer choices?

Save your money and buy USMLEWorld Qbank or Blueprints or Case Files. This book is simply ridiculously bad.