Neurosurgery in the Tropics

A practical approach to common problems By Jeffrey V. Rosenfeld and David A.K Watters (Ed) Macmillan

Education LTD 2000, Price $ 50 US ISBN0-333-68412-5 Neurosurgery in ~he Tropics is a book, aimed at
the generaL surgeon in a remote setting. As a surgical trainee in East Africa, the possibility of practicing
in a remote setting is real. It is with this background that together with a surgeon who has worked in remote areas of Western Africa, we write this review.

The book has an original and pragmatic approach that does not reiterate standard textbooks of Neurosurgery. It is comprehensive and the prose is simple, effective and eloquent. The first chapter on Developing a Neurosurgical Service gives a lot of historical and sociological information, but hardly any information on how to actually start a Neurosurgicalservice.

There is discordance in some of the information given. For example in Chapter one Levy recommends that every surgeon should learn how to perform a Pneumoencephalogram (PEG)- a risky and outdated radiological examination; then later in the secon