Dr. Pestana's Surgery Notes: Top 180 Vignettes of Surgical Diseases (Kaplan Test Prep)

Great read, easy to read, very well explained. Really enjoyed this through and through. Helped solidify concepts and was a very pleasant to go through.

This was an excellent review of surgical management written at a level accessible for third year medical students. The writing and tone reminded me of Pathoma. There is obviously more content on the shelf exam, but this was a very solid, short overview.

Going into your surgery rotation without a clue in the world? Get this book and read a few pages a day and it will be so helpful for you clinically and for the self examination. It is a great “first stop” to surgical material. It is easy to read, he even adds some humor here and there. Lots of what he mentions is testable for the shelf examination. I ended up doing very well on my exam and think this along with Uworld question bank is why.

Dr. Pestana’s book is an excellent reference and quick read for those doing their 3rd year surgical clerkships. The information in it is easy to read and succinct, making it a good reference source. The book itself came in pristine quality.

This thing reads really easily. The language isn’t terribly dense and you can actually make sense of things. He writes like it’s more of a conversation which I appreciate. It’s a manageable resource weighing in at 150 pages and lots of bolds, headers, and white space. You can breathe. Practice Qs in the back. Small and portable. No notifications so you can concentrate. High yield.Some things are a little out of date relative to latest science (post concussion protocol, others) and his language is also a bit dated (writes with stereotypes of sex, sexuality, race that don’t reflect nuance or 2020 values so well). So brace for statements that may induce a twitter response if they were tweeted not published in a book. Is it keeping in the style of USMLE stereotypical stems? Sure.Even if you’re not surgical gunner trash, I think this resource could do good things for you. Thousands of med students can be wrong, but this time I’ll agree on this high yield resource.Keep an open mind reading it.

This book is an essential resource for medical school 3rd year surgical clerkships. Information is presented in a concise, easy to read form that is in step with current medical practices. This book will undoubtedly help you with your shelf exams and USMLE, but has many relevant points that will enhance your learning and help answer the toughest P.I.M.P. questions. Also has a very useful question bank in the back of the book. As an added bonus, it’s the perfect size to fit in your white coat pocket so you can study in between cases!

I am a 3rd year medical student. I used this book to study for the general surgery shelf exam. It was extremely helpful. It is short and to the point, so every sentence is meaningful, unlike most textbooks. I believe every medical student should read this book, regardless of the specialty you are trying for - it will be worth it. I have also found it very useful for USMLE/COMLEX. I would give this 10 stars if I could.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I haven’t finished the book yet nor started on my rotation. However, I’m a very eager student who may be interested in surgery, so I have read about half this book so far (started today).It seems helpful for the shelf for sure, but I am having issues with the way Dr. Pestaña writes. He is concise at the expense of clarity. Every other sentence is like: “ The 3 main common causes of X are a, b and c respectively” Then he incorrectly uses the term former by speaking about 1 thing, then referring to it in the next sentence as “former.” Aside from my being a grammar nut, I find this style of writing to be very confusing. I feel like I always have to refer back to the previous sentence to understand what I’m reading. He also uses surgical/medical jargon, which is obviously fine, but he doesn’t define things! I have to keep looking words up, which breaks my concentration. Lastly this book is way too superficial. I’m going to continue reading it as a brief introduction, but I probably won’t refer back to it again.