In his preface, Dr Schein states that "the incidence of postcholecystectomy dissatisfaction is in the 10-30% range" and prepares us for "the first comprehensive consideration of the entire spectrum of postcholecystectomy disorders." In fact, the book turns out to be as amorphous as those introductory comments. It is an inclusive potpourri of anatomy, physiology, clinical experience, case reports, and specific technical details relating not only to the postcholecystectomy state but to pancreatic cancer, acute and chronic pancreatitis, common duct stones, cholecystostomy, cholecystoenterostomy, and, in short, anything that seems vaguely related to the gallbladder, whether or not it has been removed. Unhappily, one also suspects that sections have been added to inflate the text to book size (eg, technical details of endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography and percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography).
The book is neither systematically constructed nor well organized for reference when specific problems are of interest. The material related to a given