Pocket Foot and Ankle Medicine and Surgery

“This is an interesting little book, written as part of the expanding PocketNotebook series now covering several specialties, and is presented in ringbinder format, with hard covers designed to stand up to the rigors of beingpulled in and out of residents’ pockets frequently while working on the wardsand inpatient and outpatient settings.The purpose is to reflect current approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of anumber of common and more complex foot and ankle conditions. Pocket referencesin any specialty are always going to be a useful addition and be of value tothose in postgraduate training programs. For the most part, the objectives aremet. The limitation with any book of this size is deciding what to include andwhat to leave out. Overall, this one does a comprehensive job.The book is clearly aimed at those in training, and most specifically will be ofuse to podiatric residents and fellows in the U.S., but possibly to students,too. Overall, the contributors seem to be mostly clinical and either in training themselves orinvolved in postgraduate training, but there is a good balance of contributionsfrom both orthopedic and podiatric perspectives, which is encouraging to see.The best feature of this book is its practical design. It is easy to access theinformation it contains and it will stand up to the abuses of three years ofpostgraduate residency training. The book is organized by either very broad orvery specific topics pertinent to clinical podiatry. Each section is welloutlined and numbered at the top of each page. The weaknesses are several.There is no use of color plates, which would have been useful for thedermatology section, but would no doubt adversely affect cost. There are someareas that are not mentioned, in particular peripheral vascular disease (botharterial and venous).”Weighted Numerical Score: 76 - 3 StarsDoodys Publishers’ Club, July 2018