Quick note to say how much I’m enjoying Greenfield’s chapter on liver anatomy. This was previously a closed book to me, and whenever anyone started discussing liver anatomy/resection/any surgery coming close to the liver (which unfortunately includes a lot of surgeries), my eyes would glaze over, and I would start gazing at a point in the middle distance, hoping they would get through it before it occurred to them to ask me a question.
No more. I have finally grasped the eight hepatic lobes, and why lobe 1 is in the back, and lobe 7 is off in a corner. This is fairly significant, since most pictures of liver anatomy show the eight lobes split off, as though a 3D animation is about to start, with all kinds of spider-like connections between them. Since there are four flow systems in the liver (arterial, biliary, portal and systemic venous), any map of these branches can get quite flowery. But I could draw it for you now. . .
First time for a while that a surgical textbook has been literally a page-turner. Try it yourself. 
September 7, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Is this a book I could read to “get ahead of the curve” for medical school, and/or my follow shifts in the OR? Or will this be like my subscription to the NEJM, where I have to google every other word, and still end up a little clueless as to the overall message?
September 7, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Probably not a premed book; it’s only recently that I started having whole sentences make sense at once.
For med school preparation in general, Harrison’s Internal Medicine (the paperback, 1000pp edition, as opposed to the several volume hardcover edition), and for surgery, Schwab’s, are more basic/approachable places to start. And both of those would honestly be pretty heavy going/aggressive on your part; but if you pick something up from them, it will certainly help you to be less lost as you get into clinical material. So much of medicine consists of learning a foreign language by osmosis, so if you have time to start immersing, good for you.
Greenfield is considered intense even among surgery residents; I’m reading it because I’m determined to ace the ABSITE this year. We’ll see how well that works. . .
September 9, 2008 at 1:01 am
Thanks for the recommendations! I’m not sure that I have tons of extra time, but since I’ve taken a non-traditional path to medical school, I feel a need to prove that I belong there, and I’m desperate to get out ahead of the curve. Not to mention that I’m just nerdy enough to really enjoy reading stuff that would put the average person to sleep! I’ll go ahead and order those two today, and alternate them when physiology begins to make my eyes glaze over. At the moment, I’m trying to figure out how on Earth I’m going to be able to add a job to gain “clinical experience,” to a schedule chock full of classes, volunteering, shadowing, being a Teaching Assistant, and making sure my little man knows he’s still tops on the list. Any tips to add hours to the day?
September 15, 2008 at 9:40 am
Caffeine helps cram more work in each hour of the day, and I’ve heard there’s a whole lot of drugs out there that make you feel like there’s more hours to the day… but as far as actually doing it, I think you’re SOL.
Oh, and my $.02 would be to relax as much as possible as a premed. You’ve got plenty of time to work and prove yourself once you get here.