Handbook of Anaesthesia & amp; Peri-operative Medicine.

Creating a handbook for all of anesthesia is an undoubtedly daunting task. Cyprian Mendonca and Chandrashekar Vaidyanath should be congratulated for even attempting the feat with theirHandbook of Anaesthesia& Peri-operative Medicine. On one hand, it would have to cover incredibly broad topics with enough detail to be useful to a student, resident, or practicing physician. This book does cover huge swaths of content, with seven major sections totaling 37 chapters covering applied science, perioperative medicine, airway management, specialty-specific procedures, perioperative emergencies, critical care medicine, and pain medicine. On the other hand, a handbook, by definition, should be small enough to fit in the hand, necessitating tight control of the content. The editors state in the preface that the target audience is senior medical students and foundation doctors, which helps to limit the scope of content that would be necessary to cover, and the editors have hit this mark well. The text is complete enough to get a working sense of anesthesia for the intern or early CA-1 resident. However, they state that the book will also be useful for anesthesia trainees and practicing anesthetists, with the caveat that it will need to be supplemented with material from articles and other texts for more detailed knowledge. This text falls short of the depth of knowledge needed to pass the American Board of Anesthesiology Basic or Advanced Exam, and would definitely need to be supplem...
Source: Anesthesiology - Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: research