Foreword

Article Outline

• Copyright

One of the most difficult and in many ways controversial, areas of trauma surgery is the management of the patient with a blunt or penetrating injury to the head and neck. In this issue of Current Problems in Surgery, Drs. Demetriades, Salim, Brown, Martin, and Rhee at the University of Southern California Health System have written an excellent monograph on the topic. They draw from a broad experience with trauma patients at the Los Angeles County Hospital. The authors discuss patient management from the time of injury, through the initial assessment in the emergency room and the acute care unit, to operative management. In doing so, they present a rationale for sound patient management, noting the advances introduced by selective nonoperative management of patients, color flow Doppler computed tomography and angiographic stenting. This excellent article will be of great value to medical students, medical and surgical house officers, and acute care physicians who manage these challenging patients.