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9781905740369

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AS REVIEWED IN EYE NEWS FEB/MARCH 2008 by Aaron Yeung, Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, UK This book is the second in ophthalmology, from the Gold Standard Mini Atlas Series from Anshan Ltd. Like its brother Mini Atlas for Phacoemulsification, it is small, can be easily carried around in your pocket and contains a handy little DVD in the front pocket.The book has been designed with three separate sections: Section one covers oculoplastic procedures. Section two includes all intraocular procedures with a section on laser in posterior segment disorders. Section three covers strabismus surgery.Prof Saxena has recruited many contributors from around the globe to bring together this condensed book in ophthalmic surgery. The clever layout makes navigation very easy and looking up specific procedures takes minimal fuss. There are plenty of good quality pictures and diagrams, all of which have been well thought out and help to explain certain concepts important to successful and safe surgery.I found the section on oculoplastics particularly good, and covers the more commonly performed procedures such as lower lid ectropion and upper lid entropion. The tarso-frontal sling procedure for ptosis repair was demonstrated in a step-by-step manner very effectively and would be useful if other authors used this approach with their publications.The chapter on laser in posterior segment disorders was a welcome addition. Many new trainees learning to perform laser treatment will find this very useful, as it gives guidance on approaching each individual condition, which spot size to use, how much laser power is required and which areas to treat.The DVD contains eight mini videos that cover one area in each of the broader categories of ophthalmic surgery. The videos on Lateral Tarsal Strip Procedures and Lateral Orbitotomy were by far the best. Narration was good and again, each step was explained in detail. The quality of the other videos was good, but only gave a brief look into that specific surgical procedure. Horizontal Recti: Recession and Resection was lengthy in a good way, but unfortunately, no narration was available. This would have been most useful for new ophthalmic trainees and may be useful to include in a future edition of this book.In summary, this book is well suited for trainees starting off in ophthalmic surgery. A procedure can be read in the five minutes prior to the case starting and again reviewed immediately following the case to understand and assist in memorising different steps. Due to the size of the book, only select procedures could be included, but the authors have succeeded in what they set out to achieve. AS REVIEWED IN EUROTIMES SEPT 2007 by Seamus Sweeney MD Small is Beautiful wrote the economist and ecologist E F Schumacher some years ago. In these times of environmental awareness, when air miles are as sure a sign of moral turpitude as smoking in front of a baby, the phrase seems to sum up the times. Perhaps, in due course, fashion will change, just as the nascent environmental consciousness of the late 1980s gave way to the consumerism of the 1990s. But for the time being small really is beautiful. There is a beauty is smallness separate from its environmental or cost-effective side, and this book exemplifies that beauty.The book is a refreshing antidote to the mega productions often reviewed in these pages. What the harassed junior doctor needs, in the vast majority of contexts, is not a comprehensive textbook laden with footnotes and detailed explanations, but something portable, a literal vade mecum ( Come with me! ) The volume under discussion - like others in the Anshan Gold Standard Mini Atlas Series - is suitably small. It even incorporates a mini DVD-ROM, of small diameter, to add to the beautiful smallness of the whole enterprise. Yet the book does not skimp on the contents. The assembly of international experts, primarily from the US and India - but also from Hong Kong and Australia - is as impressive as in any of the large books, and if anything the scope of the book is greater. We are not dealing with a particular branch of ophthalmic surgery, but the whole shebang, and in a field advancing as rapidly and as mixed in with technological change as ophthalmology, the scope of the field is tremendous. Sir Francis Bacon was known as the last man who knew everything. After the Renaissance and Enlightenment, scientific progress and philosophical enquiry ran ahead of what could be comprehended in one lifetime. One wonders who the last ophthalmologist who knew everything was.The book is a comprehensive mini-atlas, replete with both black and white and colour diagrams. As this is an atlas, the emphasis is on the visual. We have pictures not only on every page, but taking up at least half of most pages. The quality of reproduction and the clarity of the images themselves are exemplary. The paper is of the usual high quality of Anshan publications. The book is, as is obvious from the above, small, with an attractive black cover with a little golden rosette on the cover indicating its membership in the series.The book is divided into three sections. The first deals with lid surgery and orbital surgery. The second, and most extensive section, begins with chapters on corneal and corneal refractive surgery. We have sections on glaucoma management, phacoemulsification, small incision cataract surgery and other surgical topics in the second section also. The third section deals with strabismus surgery.To give an example of a typical chapter, let's look at chapter 11, in section two, on macular surgery. We begin with an illustration of the epiretinal membrane and a discussion of the indications - or rather lack of indications - for vitrectomy. We then move on to the surgical technique. Then we discuss idiopathic macular hole, with detailed explanation of the surgical technique. In some sections of the book, the author discusses conditions and then approaches, while other authors focus more on types of surgical approaches and their applications.It should be noted, and is perhaps obvious from the above, that the structure of the chapters is sometimes a little loose. The reader will have to look by type of surgery, rather than clinical indication, in the contents, and while there is an adequate index, perhaps the publishers could take a hint from the Oxford Handbook series with their back cover summaries of the contents, which greatly aids navigation in a hurry. This is not a book for the total novice, or to make diagnosis from, or indeed to guide practice aside from the direct surgical situation. As outlined above, the book is relatively text light. It assumes a certain level of expert knowledge on the part of the reader, and is suitable for advanced surgical trainees or practising surgeons themselves, rather than students or those just beginning an ophthalmic surgery career. Everything is difficult before it becomes easy runs the epigraph to the book, and this book could be an integral part of the process of the difficult process of ophthalmic surgery becoming easier over time. Of course, as the introduction and preface note, ophthalmic surgery will always be difficult, for like the river described by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, everything flows - all remains in flux and transition. This volume will help the skilled practitioner or the practitioner acquiring skills to capture the river for at least a spell. So everything is difficult before it becomes easier might be a more appropriate epigraph, but this book may make things easier.

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Sandeep Saxena Member, National Academy of Medical Sciences, India Visiting Professor, University of North Caroline at Chapel Hill, USA Fellow, Barnes Retina Institute and Anheuser Busch Eye Institute, St Louis USA Fellow, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, New York USA Professor, Dept of Ophthalmology Member KGMC Institute of Clinical Epidemiology Kind George's Medical University, Lucknow India

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