Recommended plastic surgery text

[Shibumi]

Hello all,

I've just completed my general surgery residency and I'm about to start plastic surgery fellowship soon. While I know nothing substitutes staying up to date with the literatures, especially for a specialty such as plastic surgery, I need to start my reading from somewhere.

So I'm asking all who are experienced, what would be an appropriate text for my stage of the game. Mathes is out of reach for now. Grabb & Smith seems to be a nice overview kind of book, but some have criticized it being too superficial.

What do you guys think? Any help is greatly appreciated.

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[plasticdraper]

As you point out Shibumi, nothing substitutes the current literature, particularly in plastic surgery where we must keep up with new advances. That being said, if Mathes is out of the question, I would recommend the following:

McCarthy series: Still in my mind, the standard by which other comprehensive sets are measured. There are portions of it that are dated but most of the material remains relevant. Since the Mathes set is supposed to replace this, the Mccarthy series is now cheaper but difficult to find.

Selected readings, UTSW: Good set of synopses renewed every 2 years which updates and summarizes the existent literature. Excellent review which I found to be the most helpful resource for residency and was the principal tool I used to pass my written boards.

These 2 sources + Mathes and of course, current literature formed the basis of my plastic surgery reading during training plus:

Hand:
Green's Operative Hand Surgery: The Hand Bible. The principal text for hand surgery both during my residency and hand fellowship.

Trumble's Principles of Hand Surgery: Sort of the Grabb & Smith of hand surgery which summarizes salient points and one surgeon's approach to operative cases. Lots of typos but particularly good sections on physical therapy and postop rehabiliation.

CF:
Cleft craft: Again, dated but many of the principles are still used today. Excellent historical perspective and outlines the progression of cleft surgery.

I found McCarthy to be the most helpful text for CF in general.

Reconstructive surgery:
Nahai & Mathes: With clear illustrations & pictures, this was my basic reading for flaps and gives the cookbook steps.

Grabb's encyclopedia of flaps: exhaustive 3 volume set which I occasionally perused but did not purchase. I found Nahai to be enough- if not, this is where I looked next.

Aesthetics:

Nahai's the Art of Aesthetic Surgery: I found this to provide a good basic foundation. Perhaps in aesthetics more than any field, I found it difficult to find everything I wanted in 1 series. Certainly, I had to look beyond this set a good deal of the time to find "all" of the current techniques out there.

LaTrenta's Aesthetic plastic surgery: dated text with many chapters out of date, now a distant second to Nahai in my opinion and current literature.

Dallas Rhinoplasty: I'm biased towards Gunther's rhinoplasty philosophies, but these are beautifully illustrated and even the NY guys give props to this series.

Anyway, this is a start. There's more in my collection but these were my basic texts during training. I agree with you that Grabb's is too basic, although I haven't bothered looking at the new edition.

 

[plastikosmd]

dont forget to grab a Plastic Secrets book.. Weinzwieg... prob most bang for your buck...great quick read, not a primary text. i give Grabb-Smith to med student rotators

 

[Moravian]

I would strongly suggest that you figure out a way (credit card, family loan, styrofoam cup on the street corner) to get the Mathes. Yes, it's expense, but so are the others you'd need to buy to make up for not having the set.

Like Plasticdraper, I have a lot of texts, plus a subscription to Clinics and PRS. In my opinion the biggest bang for your dollar is going to be the Mathes 8 volume Plastic Surgery set. It doesn’t have everything, but it’s got most of it. In deference to Plasticdraper, I think the Mathes upper extremity volume is sufficient for every day plastic surgery. I have Greens Hand Surgery (I bought it before I bought Mathes), but it has way too much stuff in it...and it’s expensive. If your thinking about a hand fellowship, it would come in a lot handier (pun intended).

I would also say the best books, like the “best” anything, are going to be the ones you use the most. In that regard, my “best” list includes Ian Jackson’s head/face flap book, Zide’s anatomy around the orbit, and surgical approaches to the facial skeleton (I can’t remember the author and my books are currently on a moving truck). Then there is Masquelets flap book, and the Nahai Reconstructive 2 volume set. I guess you can tell from this that my program was trauma/reconstructive heavy. I also really like the 2 volume Spears breast book. I haven’t really found any kind of rhinoplasty text that I like very much. Salyer has an atlas of craniofacial surgery that has some really good graphics. Cleft Craft by Millard is a fun read for the history, but not really worth the buying (in my humble opinion even if you could find a set) unless you’re doing it for a living.

I use QMP.com (Quality Medical Publishing) to buy most of my books. Their prices are reasonable, and they occasionally have discounts. You can also sometimes find some deals on Amazon. And, in case you didn’t know, textbooks are a tax deduction (if you have enough other deductibles to make itemizing worthwhile).

Best of luck to you.

--M

 

[Shibumi]

I've decided to bite the bullet and get Mathes.

Thank you all.

 

[droliver]

I think most of those textbooks are not worth it. It makes no sense to me to spend $1000 to have hard copies of books.

I was given copies of Mathes's, Green, & Nahai's books and they all gather dust on the shelf.

I would strongly recomend getting access to a subscription of PRS, Annals of PS, & the Aesthetics journal and studying from the articles rather then overview texts which are years out of date (even if not much has really changed). All these journals have full text articles you can download as PDF files, & I have dozens I've saved on my laptop at this point. Many medical libraries have lots of texts you can check out for extended periods. Also check out eMedicine which has pretty comprehensive entries on all Plastics topics.

 

[plasticdraper]

I would argue that having some of these basic textbooks is worthwhile. As a junior resident in plastic surgery, it is useful to have a central repository with which to learn the basics rather than having to run a search and figuring out which pubs deserve serious attention. That is the difficult with focusing solely on journals- much of it has to be taken with a grain of salt since different research bears different merit. This is a more useful avenue after one has mastered the basics.

Green's in particular is useful and the online version which accompanies the book is frequently updated on line with current recommendations by the expert authors. It has been well worth the chunk of change I've put down.

In any case, each surgeon will figure out what works for him/her and performs that technique based upon personal teaching, reading, and experience.

 

[maxheadroom]

I agree that Mathes is horribly overpriced, but my program bought it for us. I subscribe to Selected Readings -- I think it's probably the most bang for your buck (so to speak). Green's is useful, but the newer edition is poorly laid-out in spots. I like Spears' new breast book (although I haven't bought it yet). I'm also a fan of Gelberman's Wrist book (we do lots of wrist at my place) and Strickland's Hand book (both are part of the Masters of Orthopedics series). They both have great pictures of important steps in hand and wrist surgery. I agree with Ollie that a PRS subscription is essential -- online access to their review articles and CME articles is more than worth the cost.