While Dr VV Jaichandran was our guest in February 2017 his book ” Principles and Practice of Ophthalmic Anaesthesia” was published and first presented at the Convention of Indian ophthalmologist in his absence. The book -wich Dr Jaichandran co-edits with Prof Chandra M Kumar, Singapore and Dr. V. Jagadeesh, Chennai- marks an important moment in Ophthalmic anaesthesia for the relatively small community of ophthalmic anesthesiologists. It is published by Jaypee brother’s publishing house. Since “Ophthalmic anaesthesia” by Professors CM Kumar, C. Dodds and S. Gayer appeared last in 2012, being brought forth by Oxford university press, there was many an excellent chapter on the subject included in other text-book. For example Dr. Gayer’s chapter in Miller’s anaesthesia or the shorter version in Dr. K. Allman’s and Dr. Iain Wilson’s “Oxford handbook of anaesthesia” by the same author.
But this new textbook underlines several important facts. First and foremost that a great share of OA-expertise comes from India and the great super-speciality hospital’s of the sub-continent. While in European and North-American clinics great numbers of patients are diverted from teaching-institutions in ophthalmic-surgery to smaller and private institutions not engaged in teaching young anaesthesiologists and ophthalmic surgeons there’s hardly a scarcity of patients in Indian super-speciality hospitals. So it follows naturally that our Indian colleagues are endowed with in-depth knowledge and practical experience.
The book is neatly structured into six sections: 1) Basic clinical knowledge 2) Clinical Practice of Anaesthesia in single-speciality Ophthalmic hospitals 3) Ophthalmmic regional anaesthesia 4) General anaesthesia effects on the eye and 5) Anaesthesia for Ophthalmic subspecialities 6) Pain.
The chapters come from experts in the field, are well structured by an introductory abstract and always end with highlighted “Nuggets of wisdom” that help the reader ease into the subject of the chapter. The chapters are well-illustrated py pictures and tables.
The copy I bought for our instituts library was met with enthusiastic interest by junior and senior staff alike.
To end on a critcal note concerning the publishing-house: ordering the book will entail a waiting time of 2-3 months, downloading the electronical version is not coupled to purchasing the paper copy.