Surgical Anatomy of the Abdomen

It is our privilege to introduce a book of surgical anatomy, especially during this time, when classical anatomy with thorough anatomical dissection on cadaveric models has been reduced significantly in medical schools, while the surgeon’s needs for anatomical knowledge has continuously increased. In the repertoire of modern general surgery, are included nowadays, trauma and emergency surgery, coloproctology, esophagus and cardia and stomach surgery, surgical oncology, hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery, endocrine surgery, transplant surgery and breast surgery. During the evolution of this speciality, surgical anatomy has experienced new refinements. Throughout this book we intended to fill the gap between all we are learning as students in the pre-clinical years and what we are facing everyday in the operating theaters. We feel that a major strength of this book is integration of embryology details, relevant for the operating surgeon who should develop dissection planes with minimum trauma and blood loss, according to the modern open and minimally invasive surgical principles. The histology data tries to offer to residents and young doctors a tool for better understanding the tissue structures relevant in surgical oncology. Being the first edition of this book, we are aware about the need for further clarification in certain areas and we rely on constructive criticism from our readers. The book is intended for a wide readership across students, residents, and general surgery physicians. We are grateful to our colleagues from the Emergency Hospital of Bucharest, from Surgery, Radiology and Imagistics, Pathology and Gastroenterology Departments who supported us with useful images. Many authors have given us permission to reproduce their figures and detailed acknowledgements are given in the text. The publisher, the Publishing House of the Romanian Academy, enthusiastically supported us with editing of our book and provided us with outstanding assistance. We hope that this book will not linger on the shelf and will be a constant place to return to for revising anatomy before going into the operating room.