Customer Reviews

Review of Surgery for ABSITE and Boards: Expert Consult- Online and Print, 1e

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Background: I'm a general surgery resident who has taken the ABSITE four times.

After going through the Johns Hopkins, Schwartz, and Rush ABSITE reviews before, I would say this book is the best. The questions are reasonable with well explained answers. The chapters cover a variety of subjects. Many are based on clinical scenarios or no-BS quick fire questions on anatomy / physiology.

This book isn't perfect. There are some EXCEPT questions (i.e. all these are true regarding popliteal artery aneurysms EXCEPT...) which use a format that doesn't appear on standardized tests. There's a dearth of the dreaded Basic Science questions; maybe that's why I 'enjoyed' this book more than others. Statistics and Legal/Ethical questions are absent. There are no chapters specifically dealing with gynecology, urology, or ortho. On the real thing, I encountered one version with a LOT of gynecology (i.e. inappropriate amount), and another with a lot of urology. Some of these subspecialties, though, are briefly touched on in other sections like trauma (ureteral injury). Some of the answers are listed incorrectly (i.e. they put A when they meant D), though you'll be able to tell, and the authors err less than Hopkins or Schwartz.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the above, the book is quite doable and makes for a surprisingly quick way to do 1400 questions. I would contrast this to Rush where it takes 1-2 hours to slog through a chapter. Some people say the test is basically in Rush, but the test is also in Greenfield's or Sabiston's. I can read this book and remain sane.

The online version is cumbersome (and I'm a fan of on-line question banks), but it's nice to have it available if you don't want to lug the book everywhere.

My recommendation would be to use the good ol' ABSITE Review by Fiser (any edition) for an overall review with this as a way of pre-testing and solidifying information. The ABSITE Review does about as much Basic Science and subspecialty work as any general surgery resident can handle. A little bit before the test, review the ABSITE Killer if you can find a copy. Even though it's 10+ years old, there's still some trivial minutiae you can memorize from it (e.g. ENT stuff I will never treat). This book, though, was the best way for me to do questions. I would rank Schwartz second to this (Schwartz is broader) and then Hopkins. Rush is more of a textbook / Q&A hybrid.

A very good question book for junior and senior ABSITE exam. Very detailed explanations. I would suggest every PGY 3 to 5 to buy this book. The online question interface is very slow. I liked the detail explanations especially on topics like Breast where there is so much controversy. I think this is a good adjunct to Fiser review. I was satisfied with the cost effectiveness also since it is 1400 Q and also has online Q bank which is very slow but not bad.

I purchased this book as a fourth year general surgery resident two weeks prior to the ABSITE exam. I reviewed every chapter in this book and found probably at least 50 questions VERBATIM on the test. The majority of the questions are ABSITE style, and moreso typical of the senior examination (not much basic science). In all, I would say that this book is worth its weight in gold, and the real treat is the answers that explain why the correct answer is correct AND why the wrong answers are wrong.

Dr Virgilio has done a terrific job of making a comprehensive question-based review of material for the Absite and boards. Overall, it covers all of the clinical aspects of general surgery which we really care about while only including pertinent questions about the specialties that we don't care about (Ortho, Urology, etc). There are a few things to keep in mind however:

1) This book is considerably more detailed than the Absite review. I consider this to be a strength. But please realize beforehand that you will feel humiliated doing the questions in this book while using the Absite Review simply because it goes into far much more detail and is more up-to-date. More often than not, when there are disagreements between the Absite review and this book, Dr Virgilio's book comes out on top, although I would still recommend referring to Cameron, etc to confirm. The Absite question book by Fiser is also child's play compared to this book.

2) Some answers are definitely controversial, but compared to the Rush Review, which takes too long and literally has so many mistakes it is useless, it is not too bad at all. Very easy to cross check with another textbook, which by the way, Dr Virgilio recommends in his foreword.

3) The question format may/may not be the same as the Absite.

All in all, I think this book will be very helpful not only for the Absite, but for the written boards as well. Well worth the money and effort.

I used this book as part of my preparation for the actual boards. I liked the explanations although I agree with the other reviewers that some answers were controversial. Overall, a good resource.

Very well written. Prepares you well for the ABSITE. Dense. Must read through it multiple times. Some question answers and explanations were controversial.