Book excerpt: The pace and sophistication of advances in medicine in the past two decades have been truly breathtaking. This has necessitated a growing need for comprehensive references that highlight the current issues in specific sectors of medicine. Keeping this in mind, each volume in the Current Issues in Medicine series is a stand‐alone text that provides a broad survey of various critical topics in a focused area of medicine—all accomplished in a user-friendly yet interconnected format. However, unlike other series on medicine or medical texts, this series focuses on current trends, perspectives, and issues in medicine that are central to healthcare delivery in the 21st century. Medical practitioners today continue to improve upon techniques and technologies to provide procedures for patients that are safer, faster, less invasive, and more accurate —a direct consequence of advances in technological breakthroughs from a variety of medical and engineering fields. In order to render modern patient care, it is imperative that surgeons and medical practitioners stay current with these latest advances in their respective specialties. Given this backdrop, the specific topics covered in this volume and the expertise of the contributing authors accurately reflect the rapidly evolving areas within surgical and medical specialties. While recognising how expansive and multifaceted medicine is, Advances in Surgical and Medical Specialties addresses crucial recent advances in surgical and medical specialties, intergrating the knowledge and experience of experts from academia and practicing surgeons. The multidisciplinary approach reflected here makes this volume a valuable reference resource for medical practictioners, medical students, nurses, fellows, residents, undergraduate and graduate students, educators, venture capitalists, policymakers, and biomedical researchers. A wide audience will benefit from having this volume on their bookshelf: health care systems, the pharmaceutical industry, academia, and government.