Incorporating and balancing advancing subspecialization is a significant challenge of modern surgery. The changes of surgical education and early subspecialization is a smaller spectrum of experience of graduating surgeons joining the rural workforce. Surgeons working in rural and remote hospitals, however, must be proficient in the great breadth of current surgical practice and face a number of challenges and demands that are specific to rural surgery. This textbook provides an update on the evidence and surgical techniques for the experienced rural surgeon and most importantly is a guideline for younger surgeons and surgical trainees joining the general surgical workforce in rural and remote areas around the world.

This unique reference fulfills the unmet need of a textbook that addresses the scope of practice for surgeons practicing in rural regions. The text provides up-to-date content covering a wide breadth of topics relevant to surgical care in rural areas, with focus on the surgical diseases that are often treated by surgical subspecialists in the urban setting. Written by experts in each subspecialty, the text focuses on procedural aspects of surgical patient care. The first section discusses practice issues unique to rural surgery and provides an overview of applying principles of quality improvement to surgical practice. Subsequent chapters cover specific surgical procedures. Each chapter includes a brief discussion of indications and contraindications for surgery. The surgical technique is described with attention to important anatomic details. Key portions of the procedure are highlighted including potential complications and how to avoid them. Procedure specific perioperative care is also discussed. Supported with ample illustrations and images, Advanced Surgical Techniques for Rural Surgeons is a valuable resource for surgeons currently in practice or preparing to practice in a rural area, as well as surgical technicians, surgical nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants.

Essential Surgery is part of a nine volume series for Disease Control Priorities which focuses on health interventions intended to reduce morbidity and mortality. The Essential Surgery volume focuses on four key aspects including global financial responsibility, emergency procedures, essential services organization and cost analysis.

Emergency General Surgery has become a cornerstone of Acute Care Surgery over the past decade. Once the scope of community general surgeons, the growing complexity of patients with acute surgical diseases has increasingly driven their care to tertiary referral centers. The aging population confounds this problem further as these patients present with more complex comorbidities, life-threatening physiology, and progressively severe anatomic disease severity. To ensure better outcomes, the practice has evolved to focus on evidence-based practice management guidelines in order to standardize care and optimize outcomes. The purpose of this text is to be a comprehensive volume for patients with acute surgical diseases. There will be three sections, each comprised of multiple chapters. The first section will be a comprehensive analysis of the background of Emergency General Surgery. The goal of this section will be to provide the reader background into the acute surgical practice and to introduce the reader to the important concepts discussed in the remainder of the textbook. The second section will be the largest and will discuss specific acute surgical diseases. Individual chapters will outline the diagnostic approach, current treatment standards, operative approaches, and expected outcomes with an emphasis on practice management guideline implementation into practice. As acute surgical diseases and surgical critical care are integral to each other, the last section will be Critical Care for the Acute Care Surgeon. These topics will focus on the critical care concepts essential to surgeons who care for acute diseases. This comprehensive text is targeted to any surgeon who takes emergency call for any of the listed diseases including community and referral general and vascular surgeons. In addition, this would be an excellent resource for all general surgery residents. Lastly, this would also serve as a resource to intensivists who care for acute surgical patients.

Issues in Surgical Research, Techniques, and Innovation: 2011 Edition is a ScholarlyEditions™ eBook that delivers timely, authoritative, and comprehensive information about Surgical Research, Techniques, and Innovation. The editors have built Issues in Surgical Research, Techniques, and Innovation: 2011 Edition on the vast information databases of ScholarlyNews.™ You can expect the information about Surgical Research, Techniques, and Innovation in this eBook to be deeper than what you can access anywhere else, as well as consistently reliable, authoritative, informed, and relevant. The content of Issues in Surgical Research, Techniques, and Innovation: 2011 Edition has been produced by the world’s leading scientists, engineers, analysts, research institutions, and companies. All of the content is from peer-reviewed sources, and all of it is written, assembled, and edited by the editors at ScholarlyEditions™ and available exclusively from us. You now have a source you can cite with authority, confidence, and credibility. More information is available at http://www.ScholarlyEditions.com/.

Both editors are active duty officers and surgeons in the U.S. Army. Dr. Martin is a fellowship trained trauma surgeon who is currently the Trauma Medical Director at Madigan Army Medical Center. He has served as the Chief of Surgery with the 47th Combat Support Hospital (CSH) in Tikrit, Iraq in 2005 to 2006, and most recently as the Chief of Trauma and General Surgery with the 28th CSH in Baghdad, Iraq in 2007 to 2008. He has published multiple peer-reviewed journal articles and surgical chapters. He presented his latest work analyzing trauma-related deaths in the current war and strategies to reduce them at the 2008 annual meeting of the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Beekley is the former Trauma Medical Director at Madigan Army Medical Center. He has multiple combat deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and has served in a variety of leadership roles with both Forward Surgical Teams (FST) and Combat Support Hospitals (CSH).

On Call is the true story of a female rural surgeon. There aren't very many rural surgeons around, so this is an uncommon story. It spans a thirty-year practice from 1981 to 2011, after her schooling and training. Dr. Lottmann explains the distinctive nature of a rural surgery practice and how it differs from an urban practice. She explains the scope of general surgery and how her particular surgical caseload changed over that thirty-year period. Surgery has changed a lot since she began her career either because of medical developments or new surgical apparatus. For a rural surgeon, it has become a challenge to offer the most up-to-date procedures in a small rural hospital because of the cost of having the very latest equipment. In On Call, Dr. Lottman takes us through her training, her practice, some of her most memorable cases, her triumphs, and some of her many challenges. She also considers the challenges of being a wife and mother as well as being a surgeon-frequently, the only surgeon in town. Dr. Lottmann hopes that her story will encourage medical students to pursue a career in rural surgery because there is a great need for them in this country.

Over the past few decades, maternal childbirth injuries have become a potent symbol of Western biomedical intervention in Africa, affecting over one million women across the global south. Western-funded hospitals have sprung up, offering surgical sutures that ostensibly allow women who suffer from obstetric fistula to return to their communities in full health. Journalists, NGO staff, celebrities, and some physicians have crafted a stock narrative around this injury, depicting afflicted women as victims of a backward culture who have their fortunes dramatically reversed by Western aid. With Beyond Surgery, medical anthropologist Anita Hannig unsettles this picture for the first time and reveals the complicated truth behind the idea of biomedical intervention as quick-fix salvation. Through her in-depth ethnography of two repair and rehabilitation centers operating in Ethiopia, Hannig takes the reader deep into a world inside hospital walls, where women recount stories of loss and belonging, shame and delight. As she chronicles the lived experiences of fistula patients in clinical treatment, Hannig explores the danger of labeling “culture” the culprit, showing how this common argument ignores the larger problem of insufficient medical access in rural Africa. Beyond Surgery portrays the complex social outcomes of surgery in an effort to deepen our understanding of medical missions in Africa, expose cultural biases, and clear the path toward more effective ways of delivering care to those who need it most.