Surgery for students. Principles of Diagnosis and Treatment. Vol II

Editor: Doru Munteanu

The present book is a collection of lecture notes and, with the aim to represent a theoretical support for the qualifying examination, it is addressed mainly to our students. Residents will benefit as well.

The science of medicine evolves constantly and so does surgery, in all its diagnostic and therapeutic aspects; yet symptoms and clinical signs will remain the same. Thus, during our labs, and throughout all the chapters of this book, we’ve constantly tried to underline the crucial importance of a thorough clinical examination, the subtle value of clinical signs or symptoms. Encouraging a “clinical and anatomical” judgement and interpretation of the imagistic results will finally establish the diagnosis.

In order not to overburden our young colleagues, only the principles of surgical treatment were presented, and description of technical details of surgical procedures have been deliberately avoided. Nevertheless, in oncologic patients, surgery is presented as integrated in multimodal therapeutic protocols.

Although most of our contributors are well renowned specialists in their fields, a number of residents and young specialists have been introduced as co-authors for some of the chapters.

Knowing that surgeons do work hard, one must realize that most of the content of this work was created during many nights and week-ends, following long hours of complex surgery, preceded or followed by labs, case presentations and lectures. Hence, my gratitude to all contributors, my distinguished colleagues, for their commitment and generous involvement in this project.

I am grateful to all our students as well. Our daily discussions, debates, questions and answers, made us better understand how to organize and formulate our chapters. Suggestions, new ideas and propositions for improved future editions will be highly appreciated.

I am particularly indebted to Professor Cornel Iancu, head of our discipline, and to my distinguished colleague, Associate Professor Ion Cosmin Puia, for their invaluable and constant support.

Doru Munteanu