General Surgical Oncology [antikvár]

PREFACEThe intent of General Surgical Oncology is to take advantage of a unique opportunity that may not last for a particularly long time. The New England Deaconess Hospital is one of the major teaching hospitals associated with Harvard Medical School and represents one of four separate general surgical training programs in the Harvard system. In contrast to the other Harvard hospitals, the Deaconess has evolved into an exclusively secondary and tertiary referral center, having personnel with particular expertise in the medical and surgical treatment of patients with solid tumors. Its collection of cancer treatment experience represents almost four generations of individuals with eminence in the surgical therapy of solid cancers. This is rare, if not unheard of, at least among the faculty of general hospitals in the United States. It occurred to us several years ago, therefore, that this collection of talent provided a reason to design a book that attempts to achieve a distinct purpose.Perhaps others would agree with us that a major problem occurs when an author attempts to write about something with which he or she is not personally familiar (whether or not the book happens to be on a medical subject). If one scans many of the standard textbooks in general surgery and/or in surgical subspecialties, one notes that often the onerous task of writing any comprehensive review falls either to a junior faculty member or a fellow who accepts the quid pro quo of first authorship. The senior author with the more familiar name is added on for the necessary patina, credibility, name-recognition, and as a reward for recruiting the "real worker." In the attempt to present definitive, almost Talmudic, expositions, what is produced often is neither of interest nor familiar to the writer. In addition, "definitive" approaches must provide balance since on any given topic in medicine, there are at least twoand usually many morereasonably argued views. The result is encyclopedic at best and boring at worst.The intent of this volume has been to produce what undoubtedly will be reviewed as an idiosyncratic single-institutional view of the training of surgical oncologists and the surgical treatment of patients with the most prevalent solid cancers. Many of the authors of these chapters are well known. All have been asked to use their own patient series and data. Most refer to their own previous peer-reviewed publications; this gives their narratives a stronger background. However, the goal of this book, as originally purveyed to the individual contributors, is to present personal views in narrative style and convey the collected wisdom of experts with significant clinical knowledge who regularly interact in a single general hospital.In some chapters, this approach has produced rather biased expositions,vii