Surgery and its subspecialties, if one peruses the myriad resources about medical computing available in books, journal articles, CD-ROMs, and, most important, the Internet and its World Wide Web (WWW) are definitely the step children of publications like Medical Computing Today (pun intended). I am not sure whether Surgery, with its hands on -- literally in -- the patient, has less than other specialties to computerize, or if surgeons have just been slower than other physicians to grasp the breadth of benefits available from these silicon-born marvels. Most surgeons know about the business uses of computers such as appointment management and billing, but relatively few recognize the absolute explosion of surgical information available via the computer and the growing clinical uses of computers in the care of surgical patients.
 
You may wonder where the Internet and the Web came from and how it became such an important resource for surgeons. I would commend to you the excellent history of the Internet contained in the briefing to the court in the now famous Communications Decency Act. (Scroll about a quarter of the way down, to the FACTS section.) Although it is a somewhat formidable legal document, this brief contains one of the most lucid explanations of this subject that I've seen.
 
One caveat for the neophyte user of Web sources: unlike medical and surgical journal articles and textbooks, materials on the Internet are sometimes less frequently and less thoroughly referenced, and are not often refereed or peer reviewed. Some are of quite variable accuracy and usefulness. Even worse, some of it is inadvertently or intentionally wrong. Every voice and viewpoint has equal access to this most democratic of media. Nevertheless, the range of useful information the Web offers clinical surgeons is extensive, and growing daily.
 

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Other Surgery on MCToday:

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