Essentials of General Surgery 5th Edition

This book was recommended for my surgery core by my attending. It's an easy and informative read, but not a white coat pocket friendly size. It's great at explaining what is expected of you, the common pre-op and post-op procedures and complications, as well as common procedures you'll be exposed to during the three months. As for the shelf, there are pocket guides such as Pastina's 180 Surgical Notes and NMS Case Files that are more high yield, but this text is great for a real understanding of what you need to know (and are likely to get pimped on in the OR).

I bought this for my 3rd year surgery clerkship and was very happy with it. I didn't read it cover to cover, just focused on parts I wanted to understand more than what I got out of NMS case files, but it's not too huge and one could do that if they wanted to. What's nice about the book is it's written in simple language and is designed to be an intro to gen surg and ideal for med students as opposed to an exhaustive text for residents/attendings.

all you need to know if you are going into general surgery residency, fast nice recap of main surgical pathologies , its not going to be enough but its great to start with

I am a surgeon and appreciate the quality of this book. For the third-year medical student, it is perfect for that rotation. My only criticism is a lack of pictures/diagrams for some of the hernias (Richter's, Amyand's, etc.). I will be recommending this book for our third-year students.

Great overview for those that prefer to learn from textbooks. You will still need to use other resources for the surgery shelf, but it does a good job of giving a broad overview of important topics. Not too long either.

Perfect level of detail for med students to study for shelf exam. However, should read more deeply about cases you are going in on. Provides great overview of topics.

Not need for third year rotations as it's too detailed. For 4th year surgical sub-i or intern year its an awesome book.

This book is a good resource for the third year medical student. As others have noted, improvements could be made to the organization (key points, summary, etc.) but this does not markedly detract from the book's content.A few notes to be aware of/why it gets fewer stars:-The online access is essentially just a searchable .pdf - not nearly the user-friendly, cross-platform functionality available with Inkling.-The "bonus online chapters" appeared in prior print editions - they have simply been put online rather than actually printing the extra pages in this edition.-The copy editing in this edition is terrible. For example, in the first chapter, every time the word "physicians" appears, it is written as "Physician's." Further, particularly in a book meant to be a resource for beginners in a field, misspellings like "palmer erythema" are unacceptable.To be fair, my criticisms are directed at the publisher (I've found similar problems with other LWW medical books) rather than the content of the text. I'll continue to use the book because it is what our school requires for our surgery clerkship, but I am not happy with the value. I would happily buy a book with similar content from a different publisher if given the choice.