Brian J. Cole and Jon K. Sekiya, editors. Philadelphia: Saunders; 2008. 789 pages. $239.00. ISBN: 978-1-4160-3447-6.
Sports medicine has evolved into a legitimate subspecialty of orthopaedic surgery. However, nobody has collected surgical technique descriptions of the most commonly performed sports-medicine operations and published them in a single volume until now. Cole and Sekiya have done so with Surgical Techniques of the Shoulder, Elbow, and Knee in Sports Medicine. Very well organized and beautifully illustrated, this book and its enclosed video supplement offer detailed descriptions of surgical procedures that are typically done by orthopaedic sports-medicine practitioners.
The book is divided into three sections: the shoulder, the elbow, and the knee. The seventy-four chapters were written by 130 authors, many of whom have had a role in the development or popularization of the operation that they describe. Each chapter is well organized into introduction, preoperative considerations (history, physical examination, indications, and contraindications), surgical technique, postoperative considerations (follow-up, rehabilitation, complications, and results), and references. The writing style is clear and succinct. The illustrations are excellent.
Most operations performed by contemporary sports-medicine surgeons are done with the aid of the arthroscope. In the shoulder section, eighteen of the thirty chapters describe arthroscopically assisted operations, eleven deal with open surgery, and one describes a combined arthroscopic-open technique; in the elbow section, six chapters deal with arthroscopic surgery and five with open surgery; and in the knee section, twenty-one chapters highlight arthroscopic surgery, nine deal with open surgery, and three describe combined arthroscopic-open techniques. Overall, there are forty-five chapters on arthroscopic surgery, twenty-five chapters on open surgery, and four chapters on combined arthroscopic and open surgery.
The book is weighted toward operations that are done infrequently and that, therefore, require more preparation by the typical surgeon. For example, although arthroscopic meniscectomy is the most commonly performed orthopaedic procedure, just eight pages are devoted to this subject. On the other hand, meniscus transplantation, which is not done often, receives three chapters (thirty pages).
The strengths of this book are its completeness, organization, and clear step-by-step descriptions of the procedures. However, in their effort to be comprehensive, the editors have included some operations that have questionable efficacy. The artwork is outstanding: the surgical illustrations are clear and accurate and clearly outshine the photographs.
I highly recommend this book to all surgeons who perform sports-medicine surgery or who are in training to do so. Instead of having to refer to standard orthopaedic surgical compendia (most of which do not describe the new arthroscopic procedures) and multiple journals when preparing for surgery, the surgeon now has available a single comprehensive and outstanding source.