What Are My Chances? by Ben Eiseman, 402 pp, with illus, $14.95, Philadelphia, Saunders Press, 1980.
The purpose of Prognosis in Surgical Diseases is to provide the surgeon with information about the outcome of surgical diseases and their management. The approach used is "handbook style" and resembles a previous book by Drs Eiseman and Wotkyns (Surgical Decision Making, WB Saunders Co, 1978) for which it is a natural follow-up.
The book covers 13 fields in surgery and includes sections on neurosurgery, head and neck, vascular, thoracic, cardiac, abdominal, gynecologic, pediatric, breast, soft-tissue, urologic, and orthopedic surgery, as well as general subjects, including material on parenteral nutrition, anesthesia, and the suicidal patient. A total of 164 topics are covered in the 13 sections. The format for each topic consists of a page or so of comments alongside a page of flow diagrams. Flow-chart items labeled with letters correspond to short statements