LAUSR

It was a pleasure to receive this third edition of the textbook Practice of Paediatric Orthopaedics which now has Mohammad Diab, the chief of pediatric orthopaedics at the University of California San Francisco, as a co-author. The series of basic textbooks developed by Lynn Staheli (Seattle) have been critical to the world’s understanding of children’s orthopaedic problems. His groundbreaking techniques, using multiple color photographs and drawings along with simple explanations, have revolutionized basic children’s orthopaedic education. The fact that Staheli has produced 2 parallel publications, directed at somewhat different audiences, has remained a bit opaque. He began in 1992 with a basic textbook entitled Fundamentals of Paediatric Orthopaedics (which appeared in 2016 in its fifth edition) that is directed toward primary care physicians and to some extent even parents. In 2001 Staheli first developed a separate and parallel textbook entitled Practice of Paedicatric Orthopaedics for which he was the sole author (along with several contributing surgeons). This book is specifically directed toward orthopaedic surgery residents and also orthopaedic surgeons in practice and describes children’s orthopaedics in more detail, including a brief description of many common operations in children’s orthopaedics. It was designed to provide a more concise, yet well-illustrated text of children’s orthopaedics (which would contrast to the more comprehensive tomes such as Tachdjian and Lovell and Winter). A second edition of this “practice” text was published in 2006 and included Dr Diab as one of the text contributors. Mohammad Diab was a resident in the University of Washington orthopaedic training program where he developed a clear understanding of Staheli’s teaching methodology. In addition, after a fellowship in Boston, Diab worked on the staff for a short time at the Children’s Hospital of Seattle with Dr Staheli and colleagues. Now in 2016 we have a new updated third edition of the Practice of Paediatric Orthopaedics with Mohammad Diab assuming a lead author role, along with Lynn Staheli. This 312 page, beautifully illustrated, textbook combines and concentrates all that was presented in the prior editions but includes many new illustrations and very current images of almost all common children’s orthopaedic problems. Mohammad Diab’s concise use of the English language is greatly appreciated (recall that he is the author of Lexicon of Orthopaedic Etymology our specialty’s “bible” regarding the Latin and Greek origins of orthopaedic terminology). This clearly comes through in this book; for example, in describing the snapping hip syndrome there is a nice discussion of the term “coxa saltans” which comes from the Latin “saltare” that is “to jump.” There are only a few paragraphs of description but a nice ultrasound to demonstrate the possible etiologies. Now that I clearly understand the difference between the “fundamentals” series by Staheli and the “practice of” series by Diab and Staheli, I plan to direct our residents and fellows to the latter (practice of) text when they are seeking “an ounce or 2” (of knowledge) as compared with the “full gallon” provided by our standard texts.