Principles of Orthopaedic Medicine and Surgery is a new hardcover textbook by Drs. Sam Wiesel and John Delahay with members of the Georgetown University Medical Center Department of Orthopaedics. The preface indicates this book is intended as a primary text for orthopedic and rheumatology residents as well as emergency room and primary care practitioners. Although this text is new, the authors’ experience in writing several other orthopedic texts is apparent in this fine effort.
The text is divided into five sections, including Basic Science, Evaluation of the Patient, General Orthopaedics, Pediatric Orthopaedics, and Regional Orthopaedic Problems of the Adult.
Each condition is presented in the same way—definition, followed by clinical, laboratory, and radiologic findings, and differential diagnoses. The natural history of the condition and treatment of the condition is then discussed. An algorithm of clinical management for each anatomic area is then presented to help integrate clusters of symptoms and signs presenting in that area. An example is the Knee and Leg chapter, which begins with a review of functional anatomy, with several succinct line drawings of important structures. Next comes a description of evaluation of problems in this area with 19 figures demonstrating knee examination. Each individual condition is then described with presentation, imaging, and treatment. The text is not intended to be a surgical atlas, but gives the foundation for understanding surgical and medical management.
In following this approach, each chapter provides a comprehensive review that can be trusted to provide fundamental detail that the resident needs and isn’t always found in board review books or compendiums of fracture treatments.
There are a few shortcomings in this book. The illustrations are black and white, and some suffer in reproduction from primary sources. There is no electronic format of the book to date. The current trend in ‘shrinking’ the format of larger surgical texts by reducing white space and headings leads to many pages of solid text. This can be intimidating at first, but the text is uniformly readable. The list price of $125 is on par with primary textbooks in other surgical specialties.
This book fills a niche with few current competitors. I highly recommend it as an initial purchase for orthopedic and rheumatology residents.