Brain Surgery: Complication Avoidance and Management

In 1946, a new text of neurosurgery by Bancroft and Pilcher appeared (Surgical Treatment of the Nervous System, Philadelphia, Pa, JB Lippincott), a single volume that encompassed the complete field of neurosurgery. Now,Brain Surgery: Complication Avoidance and Management, edited by Apuzzo, is the third multiauthored neurosurgical text to be published in the past 10 years. It is therefore an obvious inference that neurosurgery has expanded remarkably as a specialty and that, of necessity, subspecialties have developed within it. These three texts share many authors in common, each an authority in a special area. One might question the need for a third such text. However, the rapid growth of new technologies applicable to the surgical treatment of more and more pathological entities involving the cranium and its contents, and the increasing numbers of neurosurgeons, provide ample justification for the publication of this new text in the "Decade of the Brain."