Essential Clinical Surgery is a contemporary resource for undergraduate and postgraduate medical students. The second edition of this book is aimed at providing students with an understanding of the basic tenets of clinical surgery and at retaining and building on the following objectives of the first edition:

1. To describe the art of eliciting history and physical signs without ambiguity
2. To present up-to-date clinical material relevant to the practice of clinical surgery in India
3. To use appropriate clinical photographs and an algorithmic approach to corroborate and augment the textual description

Essential Clinical Surgery is aimed at filling a void that exists in the currently available clinical resources which either lack clarity in describing clinical signs, allude to diseases that are only of historical importance or describe obsolete investigations. This book is a contemporary Indian clinical resource which will augment the clinical material available to students of surgery (particularly in private medical colleges where student intake is in excess of the clinical material available for adequate exposure and training of medical students) as well as help teachers to supplement clinical instruction (particularly in government medical colleges which are equipped with a profusion of clinical material but are plagued with faculty shortage). Another trend of concern is the proliferation of super specialty departments in medical colleges, whose contribution to undergraduate teaching is virtually negligible, resulting in the broad specialties losing numbers and the range of patients available for undergraduate tutelage.

Essential Clinical Surgery is meant to help bridge this gap between the inadequate spectrum of clinical material available to students and the dearth of teachers who can provide quality clinical instruction.