The 11th edition of Farquharson’s continues to provide both the fundamental surgical skills needed by junior trainee surgeons, as well as the general surgical subspecialty knowledge necessary for higher surgical training. The topics cover the whole patient, with the concept that trainee surgeons need an overview, and all surgeons need to occasionally operate outside of their area of expertise.

Although surgeons in training no longer anticipate that they will be expected to undertake unfamiliar operations without supervision, disease and injury do not respect specialty organ practice, especially in emergency surgery and trauma. With increasing specialisation, even experienced surgeons can sometimes be involved in a surgical emergency, or an intraoperative complication, requiring them to perform an operative procedure in a subspecialty other than their own. With this in mind, each of the specialist authors have focused their topic on principles for the general surgeon, and the editors have consolidated and adapted the information to bridge the gap between general and specialty surgery.

In many parts of the world, General Surgery has remained a more all-encompassing surgical discipline, and in remote hospitals General Surgeons may be the only surgical specialists. When transfer and referral options are unavailable, or delayed, these surgeons may have to offer a limited service in orthopaedics, neurosurgery, urology and obstetrics. For these reasons, some operations in other surgical disciplines are included, and here the emphasis is more on what might be achievable in difficult circumstances, rather than a more sophisticated procedure, if this would be impractical outside a specialist centre.

This classic concise textbook will benefit all General Surgeons, whether already well-established, or just embarking on their career in surgery.