After an interval of nearly a decade, the second edition of this old favourite appears. It is a substantial book, of the print quality you would expect from these publishers. We are assured that there are no fewer than 1632 illustrations, and there is indeed a plethora of operative microphotographs and line diagrams, all in faithful colour reproduction. I almost expected CTs in colour and, even here, the labelling is in reds and yellows to stand out.
Digital photography has ensured that newer chapters demonstrate advances in image capture. Was it really only a decade ago that I refused to consider moving from Kodak Ektachrome to these new digital toys for endoscopic photography? I somewhere have the first edition (somewhere, I stress) but it seems that the chapters on paraganglioma, petrosectomy/obliteration and cochlear implantation are largely new work. It is no adverse reflection on the text to say that this is more of an atlas, and an excellent one at that. Perhaps in the myringoplasty chapter the pictures do not give as much information as a video, a possible oversight given that these days our trainees seem almost to expect to learn surgery as much from watching YouTube as from watching the struggles of their seniors. Depicting a pink graft against a pink background in tympanoplasty is a challenge to still photography, but at least the authors avoid the common UK view of a bloodbath. Ossiculoplasty concentrates more on bone for replacement than on (what may prove to be) advances in prosthetics. Cholesteatoma management is particularly well discussed.
Curiously, my personal favourites were the lengthy descriptions of management of two lesions of the external auditory canal: exostoses and cholesteatoma of the EAC. Tricky procedures both, they are rarely described, and useful tips abound here.
It gladdened the heart of this old dinosaur (and I almost ‘hear’ Tony Narula and Iain Swann nodding) to read ‘Facial nerve monitoring is not generally used in middle ear surgery. Indeed, we think that to do so may even carry risks to beginners’. You can guess the rest of that paragraph, and this book is full of just such commonsense management, along traditional, well evidenced lines. It is not cheap but you do get a lot of book for your investment.
