Book excerpt: Cracking the MRCS Viva is an outstanding guide to the MRCS Viva examination. Its unique approach recreates the structure and content of each individual viva, allowing the reader to self-test, or two students to recreate mock viva sessions for themselves. Divided into six sections to mirror the exam - applied surgical anatomy, operative surgery, applied surgical pathology, principles of surgery, applied surgical physiology, and critical care - each section covers a range of topics, listed alphabetically, and contains all the information required to pass the exam using concise, bullet-point text, helpful tables and easy to reproduce diagrams. Written by registrars who have all recently passed the MRCS, plus an MRCS examiner, this comprehensive and user-friendly revision guide also contains considerable input from other senior specialists.