Orthopedic Traumatology – A Resident's Guide

Abstract

According to Dr Ip's preface, his book is aimed at doctors in training and, where appropriate, paramedical staff who regularly deal with trauma victims. With relevance to the UK, this will mainly mean FY2, ST1 and ST2 doctors. It has forewords and is essentially endorsed by two eminent trauma professors, namely Charles Court-Brown from Edinburgh and John Wedge from Toronto. The book is divided into 12 chapters discussing important areas of trauma management. It is written in the style of a thesis, with nearly every paragraph numbered and subdivided so that a detailed index is given at the beginning of each chapter. I felt that this division for a textbook was too detailed as the point of an index at the start of a chapter is to give an at-a-glance guide to what is in it. This was not possible here as some chapter indices are many pages long. The main index at the end of the book is in a standard format and is accurate. Most topics are easy to find using the index. However, some are mentioned on many different pages and it is not clear in the index where the main narrative is located. For example, compartment syndrome has 16 entries, none of which are highlighted for ease of access. Each topic is presented in bullet-point format with any necessary subdivisions and the topics covered are accurate and current. Some of the basics like requesting appropriate radiographs, the management of major trauma and the principles of fracture fixation are described well. The current issues in fracture management and the ideas put forward are clearly contemporary and, overall, the material covered is relevant with no serious omissions. Illustrations are lacking in number and do not always appear close to the relevant text. I felt some of the text used was difficult to understand and a single diagram with a few words would have got the message across. On occasion, I felt the illustrations were not the best examples to go with the text. For example, in the section on periprosthetic fractures in the lower limb, major osteolysis around a complex knee implant is shown. A simpler example of, say, a fracture adjacent to a total knee prosthesis, which is seen much more commonly would have illustrated the point better. Compared with the competition designed for residents or similar grades, I thought that although this book was pocket-sized and to the point, it was neither detailed enough to cover the topic in depth, nor readable enough for revision purposes. It scored well in terms of portability and relevance of topics but was not as easy to read, nor did it have enough good quality illustrations for my liking. Faced with fierce competition from other authors on this subject matter, I felt that a resident or equivalent could do better in terms of a choice of text to acquire.