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Review: Basics of Anesthesia, 7th edn, 2017.

Article  in  BJA British Journal of Anaesthesia · May 2018

DOI: 10.1016/j.bja.2018.01.006

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BOOK REVIEW
Review: Basics of Anesthesia, 7th edn, 2017.
MC Pardo Jr and RD Miller (editors),
Published by Elsevier. Pp. 856. Price £55.79. ISBN-13: 978-0323401159.
When asking senior anaesthetists ‘where to start reading’ to gain
a foothold in the mountain of anaesthesia knowledge, many will
suggest starting off with Basics of Anesthesia. The 7th edition
builds on the strong foundations cemented in previous editions.
It is divided into the easily accessible sections of pharmacology
and physiology, preoperative preparation and intraoperative
management, special anaesthetic considerations, the recovery
period, and consultant anaesthetic practice. The sections and
subsequent chapters flow similarly to your thought process
when preparing a patient for their anaesthetic, surgery, and re-
covery. Each chapter begins with a bite-sized overview of the
topic you are about to read, which nicely encapsulates the
importance of the core knowledge and the patient, anaesthetic,
and surgical factors that you face in the anaesthetic room,
emergency department, operating theatre, or intensive care
unit. In keeping with prior editions, the textbook provides
excellent graphic diagrams that are well explained to guide your
learning about specific topics of anaesthesia. Compared with
previous editions, this current edition has enlarged the diagrams
allowing the reader who may be preparing for exams to easily
visualise and understand the basic concepts and theory essen-
tial to postgraduate anaesthetic exam success.
Often as a novice anaesthetist, when browsing through
textbooks on anaesthesia, you can find that the material is too
broad and basic, almost aimed at medical students. However,
Basics of Anesthesia is crafted in such a way that your knowledge
and understanding builds up, chapter by chapter. Basic con-
cepts are often well illustrated with helpful analogies before
more complicated theories and equations are introduced. As
the concepts become more complex, Basics of Anesthesia refer-
ences later chapters which allows the reader to see how
different theories fit together and how certain ideas are rele-
vant to clinical practice. This is all achieved without leading the
reader on a tangent. Not only is the textbook highly readable,
but the organisation, layout, and index enable its use as a
reference source with its well-placed graphs, large and anno-
tated equations, and its boxes containing key definitions that
are common ammunition for quizzing in the operating theatre.
In some respects, the textbook might be considered to
summarise eloquently some basic aspects of physics, physiology,
and pathophysiology in a bid to keep the textbook more clinically
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British Journal of Anaesthesia, 120 (5): 1141 (2018)
orientated, but this may fail some readers who would want more
detail in specific basic science areas in preparation for the pri-
mary fellowship examination of the Royal College of Anaesthe-
tists (FRCA). For those readers who wish further detail and
reading, the textbook has a superb list of references signposting
the reader to current literature and research on a variety of topics.
The online eBook version adds another dimension to some of the
diagrams printed in the textbook, again adding to thebooks ability
to help the reader visualise some of the key concepts described.
With exams in mind, each chapter concludes with ‘Questions of
the day’, which are excellent self-assessment tools for anyone
wishing to test their knowledge on what they have just read.
The Achilles heel of many multi-author textbooks that aim to
cover the knowledge base of an entire speciality is that the
chapters are written and designed in a variety of styles making
some weaker than others. In contrast, the 7th edition has
evolved, with each chapter penned in a similar style, which
provides continuity for the reader. Few basic clinical textbooks
are free from errors, but it came as a surprise for Basics of Anes-
thesia to perpetuate the hazardous recommendation that L2-3 is
a suitable intervertebral space for spinal anaesthetic injection
when using surface anatomical landmarks. A further criticism of
Basics of Anesthesia for international audiences is that the book is
obviously geared towards American trainees and practice.
Whilst this is not a problem for the majority of the book, some
information is either not relevant or not the same for clinical
practice elsewhere.
In summary, Basics of Anesthesia remains a cornerstone of
anaesthesia knowledge. The 7th edition is a basic textbook
that gently introduces the world of anaesthesia to a novice, but
at the same time remains as a useful desk reference for an
international audience of readers.
L. McMenamin, J. Clarke and P. Hopkins*
Leeds Institute of Biomedical & Clinical Sciences, University of Leeds,
Leeds, UK
*Corresponding reviewer.
E-mail address: P.M.Hopkins@leeds.ac.uk
doi: 10.1016/j.bja.2018.01.006
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