�Build-A-Boob� is the inspirational story of one woman�s refusal to give up on having her breasts and her life restored after breast cancer radiation destroyed her chest at the age of 46. Breast cancer affects us all. Most of us know someone who has it or has had it. What we don�t know and don�t often hear about are the stories of pain and the physical and emotional scars that are left behind. This is about survival ���after the cure.

Her story offers hope to millions of women, showing how actually using liposuction can rebuild a breast by regenerating one�s own skin. Very few plastic surgeons are currently using this procedure and this is an important issue for all women.

The technique of using liposuction to rebuild a breast in its entirety is not new. What is new is that Lisa Masters� stems cells from her fat totally restored the skin and fat damaged by radiation allowing the eventual insertion of a permanent implant. All of this was done through trial and error, and her plastic surgeon, Dr. Sergio Zamora says that this procedure works every single time. The process took four and half years to complete.

In addition, she addresses medical insurance concerns and how her HMO, Florida Health Care BC/BS, supported her through this lengthy process.

Lisa, like millions after being diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, went through the typical therapies. She underwent two lumpectomies, chemotherapy, a bilateral mastectomy followed by immediate reconstruction with the insertion of tissue expanders and a hysterectomy. When she healed from the surgeries, she had radiation therapy.

It only took 15 additional surgeries, but, Lisa Masters now has two breasts and a purpose�to spread the word and break the silence of those who live with the scars that breast cancer has left behind.

The book is written from her perspective which includes 25 very graphic breast photos from beginning to end along with her own photo in order to make the story personal. The medical photos alone tell a story of success and they are difficult to look at. However, she feels those photos must be shown to the world and must be connected to a face; her face.

Build-A-Boob talks about Lisa Masters� family and their life prior to cancer. The book also talks about the toil this disease took on everyone involved.

�Build-A-Boob� is a story of failure, pain, determination and success told with humor and optimism that involves a tenacious plastic surgeon and a woman who never settled.

Included is a �Forward� written by plastic surgeon Dr. Sergio Zamora, Daytona Beach, FL

�Build-A-Boob� is the inspirational story of one woman�s refusal to give up on having her breasts and her life restored after breast cancer radiation destroyed her chest at the age of 46. Breast cancer affects us all. Most of us know someone who has it or has had it. What we don�t know and don�t often hear about are the stories of pain and the physical and emotional scars that are left behind. This is about survival ���after the cure.

Her story offers hope to millions of women, showing how actually using liposuction can rebuild a breast by regenerating one�s own skin. Very few plastic surgeons are currently using this procedure and this is an important issue for all women.

The technique of using liposuction to rebuild a breast in its entirety is not new. What is new is that Lisa Masters� stems cells from her fat totally restored the skin and fat damaged by radiation allowing the eventual insertion of a permanent implant. All of this was done through trial and error, and her plastic surgeon, Dr. Sergio Zamora says that this procedure works every single time. The process took four and half years to complete.

In addition, she addresses medical insurance concerns and how her HMO, Florida Health Care BC/BS, supported her through this lengthy process.

Lisa, like millions after being diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, went through the typical therapies. She underwent two lumpectomies, chemotherapy, a bilateral mastectomy followed by immediate reconstruction with the insertion of tissue expanders and a hysterectomy. When she healed from the surgeries, she had radiation therapy.

It only took 15 additional surgeries, but, Lisa Masters now has two breasts and a purpose�to spread the word and break the silence of those who live with the scars that breast cancer has left behind.

The book is written from her perspective which includes 25 very graphic breast photos from beginning to end along with her own photo in order to make the story personal. The medical photos alone tell a story of success and they are difficult to look at. However, she feels those photos must be shown to the world and must be connected to a face; her face.

Build-A-Boob talks about Lisa Masters� family and their life prior to cancer. The book also talks about the toil this disease took on everyone involved.

�Build-A-Boob� is a story of failure, pain, determination and success told with humor and optimism that involves a tenacious plastic surgeon and a woman who never settled.

Included is a �Forward� written by plastic surgeon Dr. Sergio Zamora, Daytona Beach, FL

�Build-A-Boob� is the inspirational story of one woman�s refusal to give up on having her breasts and her life restored after breast cancer radiation destroyed her chest at the age of 46. Breast cancer affects us all. Most of us know someone who has it or has had it. What we don�t know and don�t often hear about are the stories of pain and the physical and emotional scars that are left behind. This is about survival ���after the cure.

Her story offers hope to millions of women, showing how actually using liposuction can rebuild a breast by regenerating one�s own skin. Very few plastic surgeons are currently using this procedure and this is an important issue for all women.

The technique of using liposuction to rebuild a breast in its entirety is not new. What is new is that Lisa Masters� stems cells from her fat totally restored the skin and fat damaged by radiation allowing the eventual insertion of a permanent implant. All of this was done through trial and error, and her plastic surgeon, Dr. Sergio Zamora says that this procedure works every single time. The process took four and half years to complete.

In addition, she addresses medical insurance concerns and how her HMO, Florida Health Care BC/BS, supported her through this lengthy process.

Lisa, like millions after being diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, went through the typical therapies. She underwent two lumpectomies, chemotherapy, a bilateral mastectomy followed by immediate reconstruction with the insertion of tissue expanders and a hysterectomy. When she healed from the surgeries, she had radiation therapy.

It only took 15 additional surgeries, but, Lisa Masters now has two breasts and a purpose�to spread the word and break the silence of those who live with the scars that breast cancer has left behind.

The book is written from her perspective which includes 25 very graphic breast photos from beginning to end along with her own photo in order to make the story personal. The medical photos alone tell a story of success and they are difficult to look at. However, she feels those photos must be shown to the world and must be connected to a face; her face.

Build-A-Boob talks about Lisa Masters� family and their life prior to cancer. The book also talks about the toil this disease took on everyone involved.

�Build-A-Boob� is a story of failure, pain, determination and success told with humor and optimism that involves a tenacious plastic surgeon and a woman who never settled.

Included is a �Forward� written by plastic surgeon Dr. Sergio Zamora, Daytona Beach, FL

�This book is my story of experiences I endured going through 19 major operations. From my tonsils being removed at age 17 to having a 4 level back fusion at age 50 with many in-between, and after.� Some of them brought me close to death, and some were not so traumatic. However dealing with doctors is another story!�

�This book is my story of experiences I endured going through 19 major operations. From my tonsils being removed at age 17 to having a 4 level back fusion at age 50 with many in-between, and after.� Some of them brought me close to death, and some were not so traumatic. However dealing with doctors is another story!�

�This book is my story of experiences I endured going through 19 major operations. From my tonsils being removed at age 17 to having a 4 level back fusion at age 50 with many in-between, and after.� Some of them brought me close to death, and some were not so traumatic. However dealing with doctors is another story!�

Medical experts co-author a book that delves into war-inflicted wound -its defininition, types, complications and different treatments. This book is recommended for all aspiring medical practitioners, soldiers, students and even relatives of combat war heroes-to give them more knowledge of what their loved one facing. This book will help readers to understand that even when a soldier goes out of the battlefield, the struggle still goes on

Medical experts co-author a book that delves into war-inflicted wound -its defininition, types, complications and different treatments. This book is recommended for all aspiring medical practitioners, soldiers, students and even relatives of combat war heroes-to give them more knowledge of what their loved one facing. This book will help readers to understand that even when a soldier goes out of the battlefield, the struggle still goes on

PROLOGUE: IDEAL HEALTHExperience is the oracle of truth…where its responses are unequivocal; they ought to be conclusive and sacred. James Madison, Federalist 18-20 Twenty-first century medicine offers better outcomes than at any other time in history, yet many, if not most people are unhappy with health care. The World Health Organization defines health as: “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity...” a statement suggesting an ideal state of complete well being that lies within society’s grasp. This ideal might be achieved within the context of an altruistic society, inhabited by intelligent individuals possessing high moral and ethical values, abundant resources, access to advanced technology, and effective, equitable governance. The concept promises a paradise on earth, yet formidable challenges confound its realization–– this is one of several dilemmas confronting health care. People living in the third world, victimized by lack of education, unremitting poverty, and corrupt governments suffer widespread ill health due to readily correctible causes––undernutrition, lack of sanitation, contaminated food and water and ethnic violence. These unfortunate conditions relate to political, cultural issues and, some might say, moral issues. Inner city dwellers or those living in other deprived areas within the United States are also victimized, while more privileged inhabitants of ‘advanced’ societies sooner or later develop lethal diseases, many due to unknown or obscure causes. The treatment of these illnesses, to which the poor are not necessarily immune, requires specialized skills focusing upon individuals. This is also a part of the health care dilemma. Specialized approaches differ from world and public health centered views of ‘Health Care.’ Generalizations about health and prevention, in the minds of policy makers, have become conflated with treatment of advanced disease––a confusion that potentially threatens specialists who are the custodians of unique skills required to treat serious illnesses. Clearly, effective Health Care requires both preventive and advanced treatment services––part of the dilemma is that each needs more detailed definition. This book describes surgical care, some it involving general surgical problems and some of it within the specialty of vascular surgery. Each story or complaint highlights dilemmas facing doctors and patients alike. Surgical interventions are life saving, life enhancing processes that carry with them important societal implications. Surgical efforts are costly, time intensive, and come into play individually––one case at a time.Illnesses often present with a dominant symptom, a Chief Complaint. The patient’s Chief Complaint is key to effective diagnosis and treatment. The words, manner, and circumstances of patient’s complaints express specific truths. Complaints require action––sometimes immediate, sometimes measured and deliberate, and sometimes with judicious restraint. Deciding how, and at what rate, to react to complaints are also dilemmas facing patients, doctors and health care systems. Modern medicine, paradoxically, tends to overlook and marginalize individual concerns and cultural sensitivities in favor of ‘cost-benefit’ or public policy analyses, leading to rigid policy decisions that conflict with individual needs and sensitivities. Laboratory testing and imaging increasingly uncover the silent beginnings of serious disease before symptoms develop––this is usually a good thing––sometimes it is not––currently enhanced diagnostic prowess poses yet another dilemma facing doctors and health care policy makers. Abnormal test results, ideally, should be considered as Chief Complaints. Abnormal test results can become sources of anxiety prompting ill advised and premature actions, or conversely, may be ignored with disastrous results. Controversies about which tests, how many, and at what time intervals these should be performed contribute to a financial dilemma. Management of patients with positive test results, in the absence of specific complaints, requires expert knowledge about particular disease processes. Action decisions are best implemented in unique rather than in formulaic ways. Individual particulars often override aggregate dicta of branched chain logic and cost-benefit analyses––further compounding decision making. Process of care guidelines and cookbook approaches, while useful generally, will never provide unerring guidance for each and every person.This book describes people, individuals with complaints due to serious illnesses seen over five decades of evolving medical and surgical practice. The social and political contexts in which their complaints arose are instructive, not only for medical professionals and policy makers, but also for informed general readers. Where possible, insights for resolution of some of the dilemmas have been suggested. I have chosen old fashioned words: neither “providers” nor “healthcare workers” for doctors and nurses, nor “client” or “customer” for the sick and suffering. Anecdotes, stories, favorites of patients and doctors alike, convey detailed information about personal health care choices related to surgery, insights about how services are financed and how high quality care can be measured and assured. Specific anecdotes, grouped and analyzed intelligently, provide a theme stressing individual rather than aggregate ‘Health Care’ concerns. Each incident teaches lessons reinforcing the idea that treatment of sick people requires a focus that, in some degree, must distance itself from societal, financial or governmental constraints. While statistical discipline and randomized trials demand respectful attention––though some lately have been found to possess decidedly clay feet––analyses of individual illnesses and opinion reviews also generate important new information. Patterns of illness and specific interventions resulting in favorable or unfavorable outcomes have been and remain part of the science of medicine at well as its art. This knowledge base is in danger of being submerged by general aggregate approaches subservient to a vaguely defined concept of ‘Health Care’… the lack of definition of what Health Care actually is comprises a dilemma in itself! Lessons learned by the medical profession in treating the sick originated from a rational, empiric discipline extending into past history, to the mid fourth century BCE, the era of Hippocrates. This approach to individuals and illnesses remains equally valid today. These stories, told from the viewpoint of a surgeon privileged to see, feel and smell disease pathology, show that medicine is neither completely scientific nor unerring. Surgeons appreciate abnormal anatomy and physiology of diseases as physical realities rather than as abstractions––a capability that provides critical insights into effective treatments. Modern surgery possesses an array of innovative interventions––powerfully combined with medical treatments that may cure or, at the least, ameliorate serious diseases. When surgical interventions go wrong, adverse effects usually appear promptly–– individual deaths or prolonged disabilities affect families, groups, and society. These adverse events have far reaching consequences that rise to the level of public health problems, for example, malpractice litigation awards that lead to overly defensive medical practices which ultimately inflates the cost of medical care delivery. Each story recounts how each patient complained, how missteps and mishaps sometimes occurred, and how each episode of care turned out. Each provides an account of progress over time along with suggestions about what might be done to improve future care. Each case history is accurate in context, with personal details, times, places, and identities altered to protect individual privacy. Chief complaints can be id

PROLOGUE: IDEAL HEALTHExperience is the oracle of truth…where its responses are unequivocal; they ought to be conclusive and sacred. James Madison, Federalist 18-20 Twenty-first century medicine offers better outcomes than at any other time in history, yet many, if not most people are unhappy with health care. The World Health Organization defines health as: “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity...” a statement suggesting an ideal state of complete well being that lies within society’s grasp. This ideal might be achieved within the context of an altruistic society, inhabited by intelligent individuals possessing high moral and ethical values, abundant resources, access to advanced technology, and effective, equitable governance. The concept promises a paradise on earth, yet formidable challenges confound its realization–– this is one of several dilemmas confronting health care. People living in the third world, victimized by lack of education, unremitting poverty, and corrupt governments suffer widespread ill health due to readily correctible causes––undernutrition, lack of sanitation, contaminated food and water and ethnic violence. These unfortunate conditions relate to political, cultural issues and, some might say, moral issues. Inner city dwellers or those living in other deprived areas within the United States are also victimized, while more privileged inhabitants of ‘advanced’ societies sooner or later develop lethal diseases, many due to unknown or obscure causes. The treatment of these illnesses, to which the poor are not necessarily immune, requires specialized skills focusing upon individuals. This is also a part of the health care dilemma. Specialized approaches differ from world and public health centered views of ‘Health Care.’ Generalizations about health and prevention, in the minds of policy makers, have become conflated with treatment of advanced disease––a confusion that potentially threatens specialists who are the custodians of unique skills required to treat serious illnesses. Clearly, effective Health Care requires both preventive and advanced treatment services––part of the dilemma is that each needs more detailed definition. This book describes surgical care, some it involving general surgical problems and some of it within the specialty of vascular surgery. Each story or complaint highlights dilemmas facing doctors and patients alike. Surgical interventions are life saving, life enhancing processes that carry with them important societal implications. Surgical efforts are costly, time intensive, and come into play individually––one case at a time.Illnesses often present with a dominant symptom, a Chief Complaint. The patient’s Chief Complaint is key to effective diagnosis and treatment. The words, manner, and circumstances of patient’s complaints express specific truths. Complaints require action––sometimes immediate, sometimes measured and deliberate, and sometimes with judicious restraint. Deciding how, and at what rate, to react to complaints are also dilemmas facing patients, doctors and health care systems. Modern medicine, paradoxically, tends to overlook and marginalize individual concerns and cultural sensitivities in favor of ‘cost-benefit’ or public policy analyses, leading to rigid policy decisions that conflict with individual needs and sensitivities. Laboratory testing and imaging increasingly uncover the silent beginnings of serious disease before symptoms develop––this is usually a good thing––sometimes it is not––currently enhanced diagnostic prowess poses yet another dilemma facing doctors and health care policy makers. Abnormal test results, ideally, should be considered as Chief Complaints. Abnormal test results can become sources of anxiety prompting ill advised and premature actions, or conversely, may be ignored with disastrous results. Controversies about which tests, how many, and at what time intervals these should be performed contribute to a financial dilemma. Management of patients with positive test results, in the absence of specific complaints, requires expert knowledge about particular disease processes. Action decisions are best implemented in unique rather than in formulaic ways. Individual particulars often override aggregate dicta of branched chain logic and cost-benefit analyses––further compounding decision making. Process of care guidelines and cookbook approaches, while useful generally, will never provide unerring guidance for each and every person.This book describes people, individuals with complaints due to serious illnesses seen over five decades of evolving medical and surgical practice. The social and political contexts in which their complaints arose are instructive, not only for medical professionals and policy makers, but also for informed general readers. Where possible, insights for resolution of some of the dilemmas have been suggested. I have chosen old fashioned words: neither “providers” nor “healthcare workers” for doctors and nurses, nor “client” or “customer” for the sick and suffering. Anecdotes, stories, favorites of patients and doctors alike, convey detailed information about personal health care choices related to surgery, insights about how services are financed and how high quality care can be measured and assured. Specific anecdotes, grouped and analyzed intelligently, provide a theme stressing individual rather than aggregate ‘Health Care’ concerns. Each incident teaches lessons reinforcing the idea that treatment of sick people requires a focus that, in some degree, must distance itself from societal, financial or governmental constraints. While statistical discipline and randomized trials demand respectful attention––though some lately have been found to possess decidedly clay feet––analyses of individual illnesses and opinion reviews also generate important new information. Patterns of illness and specific interventions resulting in favorable or unfavorable outcomes have been and remain part of the science of medicine at well as its art. This knowledge base is in danger of being submerged by general aggregate approaches subservient to a vaguely defined concept of ‘Health Care’… the lack of definition of what Health Care actually is comprises a dilemma in itself! Lessons learned by the medical profession in treating the sick originated from a rational, empiric discipline extending into past history, to the mid fourth century BCE, the era of Hippocrates. This approach to individuals and illnesses remains equally valid today. These stories, told from the viewpoint of a surgeon privileged to see, feel and smell disease pathology, show that medicine is neither completely scientific nor unerring. Surgeons appreciate abnormal anatomy and physiology of diseases as physical realities rather than as abstractions––a capability that provides critical insights into effective treatments. Modern surgery possesses an array of innovative interventions––powerfully combined with medical treatments that may cure or, at the least, ameliorate serious diseases. When surgical interventions go wrong, adverse effects usually appear promptly–– individual deaths or prolonged disabilities affect families, groups, and society. These adverse events have far reaching consequences that rise to the level of public health problems, for example, malpractice litigation awards that lead to overly defensive medical practices which ultimately inflates the cost of medical care delivery. Each story recounts how each patient complained, how missteps and mishaps sometimes occurred, and how each episode of care turned out. Each provides an account of progress over time along with suggestions about what might be done to improve future care. Each case history is accurate in context, with personal details, times, places, and identities altered to protect individual privacy. Chief complaints can be id

PROLOGUE: IDEAL HEALTHExperience is the oracle of truth…where its responses are unequivocal; they ought to be conclusive and sacred. James Madison, Federalist 18-20 Twenty-first century medicine offers better outcomes than at any other time in history, yet many, if not most people are unhappy with health care. The World Health Organization defines health as: “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity...” a statement suggesting an ideal state of complete well being that lies within society’s grasp. This ideal might be achieved within the context of an altruistic society, inhabited by intelligent individuals possessing high moral and ethical values, abundant resources, access to advanced technology, and effective, equitable governance. The concept promises a paradise on earth, yet formidable challenges confound its realization–– this is one of several dilemmas confronting health care. People living in the third world, victimized by lack of education, unremitting poverty, and corrupt governments suffer widespread ill health due to readily correctible causes––undernutrition, lack of sanitation, contaminated food and water and ethnic violence. These unfortunate conditions relate to political, cultural issues and, some might say, moral issues. Inner city dwellers or those living in other deprived areas within the United States are also victimized, while more privileged inhabitants of ‘advanced’ societies sooner or later develop lethal diseases, many due to unknown or obscure causes. The treatment of these illnesses, to which the poor are not necessarily immune, requires specialized skills focusing upon individuals. This is also a part of the health care dilemma. Specialized approaches differ from world and public health centered views of ‘Health Care.’ Generalizations about health and prevention, in the minds of policy makers, have become conflated with treatment of advanced disease––a confusion that potentially threatens specialists who are the custodians of unique skills required to treat serious illnesses. Clearly, effective Health Care requires both preventive and advanced treatment services––part of the dilemma is that each needs more detailed definition. This book describes surgical care, some it involving general surgical problems and some of it within the specialty of vascular surgery. Each story or complaint highlights dilemmas facing doctors and patients alike. Surgical interventions are life saving, life enhancing processes that carry with them important societal implications. Surgical efforts are costly, time intensive, and come into play individually––one case at a time.Illnesses often present with a dominant symptom, a Chief Complaint. The patient’s Chief Complaint is key to effective diagnosis and treatment. The words, manner, and circumstances of patient’s complaints express specific truths. Complaints require action––sometimes immediate, sometimes measured and deliberate, and sometimes with judicious restraint. Deciding how, and at what rate, to react to complaints are also dilemmas facing patients, doctors and health care systems. Modern medicine, paradoxically, tends to overlook and marginalize individual concerns and cultural sensitivities in favor of ‘cost-benefit’ or public policy analyses, leading to rigid policy decisions that conflict with individual needs and sensitivities. Laboratory testing and imaging increasingly uncover the silent beginnings of serious disease before symptoms develop––this is usually a good thing––sometimes it is not––currently enhanced diagnostic prowess poses yet another dilemma facing doctors and health care policy makers. Abnormal test results, ideally, should be considered as Chief Complaints. Abnormal test results can become sources of anxiety prompting ill advised and premature actions, or conversely, may be ignored with disastrous results. Controversies about which tests, how many, and at what time intervals these should be performed contribute to a financial dilemma. Management of patients with positive test results, in the absence of specific complaints, requires expert knowledge about particular disease processes. Action decisions are best implemented in unique rather than in formulaic ways. Individual particulars often override aggregate dicta of branched chain logic and cost-benefit analyses––further compounding decision making. Process of care guidelines and cookbook approaches, while useful generally, will never provide unerring guidance for each and every person.This book describes people, individuals with complaints due to serious illnesses seen over five decades of evolving medical and surgical practice. The social and political contexts in which their complaints arose are instructive, not only for medical professionals and policy makers, but also for informed general readers. Where possible, insights for resolution of some of the dilemmas have been suggested. I have chosen old fashioned words: neither “providers” nor “healthcare workers” for doctors and nurses, nor “client” or “customer” for the sick and suffering. Anecdotes, stories, favorites of patients and doctors alike, convey detailed information about personal health care choices related to surgery, insights about how services are financed and how high quality care can be measured and assured. Specific anecdotes, grouped and analyzed intelligently, provide a theme stressing individual rather than aggregate ‘Health Care’ concerns. Each incident teaches lessons reinforcing the idea that treatment of sick people requires a focus that, in some degree, must distance itself from societal, financial or governmental constraints. While statistical discipline and randomized trials demand respectful attention––though some lately have been found to possess decidedly clay feet––analyses of individual illnesses and opinion reviews also generate important new information. Patterns of illness and specific interventions resulting in favorable or unfavorable outcomes have been and remain part of the science of medicine at well as its art. This knowledge base is in danger of being submerged by general aggregate approaches subservient to a vaguely defined concept of ‘Health Care’… the lack of definition of what Health Care actually is comprises a dilemma in itself! Lessons learned by the medical profession in treating the sick originated from a rational, empiric discipline extending into past history, to the mid fourth century BCE, the era of Hippocrates. This approach to individuals and illnesses remains equally valid today. These stories, told from the viewpoint of a surgeon privileged to see, feel and smell disease pathology, show that medicine is neither completely scientific nor unerring. Surgeons appreciate abnormal anatomy and physiology of diseases as physical realities rather than as abstractions––a capability that provides critical insights into effective treatments. Modern surgery possesses an array of innovative interventions––powerfully combined with medical treatments that may cure or, at the least, ameliorate serious diseases. When surgical interventions go wrong, adverse effects usually appear promptly–– individual deaths or prolonged disabilities affect families, groups, and society. These adverse events have far reaching consequences that rise to the level of public health problems, for example, malpractice litigation awards that lead to overly defensive medical practices which ultimately inflates the cost of medical care delivery. Each story recounts how each patient complained, how missteps and mishaps sometimes occurred, and how each episode of care turned out. Each provides an account of progress over time along with suggestions about what might be done to improve future care. Each case history is accurate in context, with personal details, times, places, and identities altered to protect individual privacy. Chief complaints can be id

My book describes the significance and difference of low back pain among a child, adult, or elder. It guides the nonmedical reader how to evaluate low back pain, how it should be treated, and it emphasizes a conservative nonsurgical treatment. I wrote a chapter about the anatomy of the lower spine, so the lector will have a better understanding of the medical condition; a chapter about sciatic pain, central and lateral hemiated discs, spinal stenosis, sacroiliac strain, and coccygodynia; one about and when surgery is indicated and how to go about a consultation and “second opinion”; I talk about physical therapy and its multiple modalities; as well as manipulation, acupuncture, and trigger points injections. I have a small chapter of the most common surgical procedures and also about painkillers and analgesics. I describe my own exercise program for the treatment of low back pain. Finally, there is a chapter that I call Useful Resources, a Web page where the reader can obtain serious professional information about the subject. I feel that this small book could be useful to the average reader, to these days of “medical propaganda” when we are paying for unnecessary surgery and tests, which are very costly and sometimes with catastrophic results.

My book describes the significance and difference of low back pain among a child, adult, or elder. It guides the nonmedical reader how to evaluate low back pain, how it should be treated, and it emphasizes a conservative nonsurgical treatment. I wrote a chapter about the anatomy of the lower spine, so the lector will have a better understanding of the medical condition; a chapter about sciatic pain, central and lateral hemiated discs, spinal stenosis, sacroiliac strain, and coccygodynia; one about and when surgery is indicated and how to go about a consultation and “second opinion”; I talk about physical therapy and its multiple modalities; as well as manipulation, acupuncture, and trigger points injections. I have a small chapter of the most common surgical procedures and also about painkillers and analgesics. I describe my own exercise program for the treatment of low back pain. Finally, there is a chapter that I call Useful Resources, a Web page where the reader can obtain serious professional information about the subject. I feel that this small book could be useful to the average reader, to these days of “medical propaganda” when we are paying for unnecessary surgery and tests, which are very costly and sometimes with catastrophic results.

My book describes the significance and difference of low back pain among a child, adult, or elder. It guides the nonmedical reader how to evaluate low back pain, how it should be treated, and it emphasizes a conservative nonsurgical treatment. I wrote a chapter about the anatomy of the lower spine, so the lector will have a better understanding of the medical condition; a chapter about sciatic pain, central and lateral hemiated discs, spinal stenosis, sacroiliac strain, and coccygodynia; one about and when surgery is indicated and how to go about a consultation and “second opinion”; I talk about physical therapy and its multiple modalities; as well as manipulation, acupuncture, and trigger points injections. I have a small chapter of the most common surgical procedures and also about painkillers and analgesics. I describe my own exercise program for the treatment of low back pain. Finally, there is a chapter that I call Useful Resources, a Web page where the reader can obtain serious professional information about the subject. I feel that this small book could be useful to the average reader, to these days of “medical propaganda” when we are paying for unnecessary surgery and tests, which are very costly and sometimes with catastrophic results.

Even the brightest lights grow dim if they are not attended, and the great old torch-bearers and their works needs refreshment. After Nicaise all the Europeans, except the English speaking people, had new editions and translations of Guy�s Major Surgery. With this translation of Nicaise�s edition, all of the eight seminal treatises by the surgeons who brought surgery anew into Europe now are available to the English-Reader. The long discursive Introductions and footnotes by Nicaise and Joubert, and footnotes and explanatory insertions by this translator supplement Guy�s text with a fine history of French surgery. Indeed, as Nicaise wrote in the historical Introduction to his edition of Pierre Franco, if we were to combine the introductions in his editions of Henri de Mondeville, Pierre Franco, and Guy de Chauliac with Malgaigne�s Introduction to his edition of Ambroise Pare, we will have a complete history of European Surgery before the modern era. Guy�s era was that of the Great Plague, and his book was written after its first invasion. His respectful attitude toward his colleagues and his suave gentility secured him as an officer of the Church, and as a Surgeon for The Popes at Avignon.