Quinones-Hinojosa A, Raza S M: Controversies in Neuro-Oncology: Best Evidence Medicine for Brain Tumor Surgery

Excerpt

How many textbooks in your own subspeciality in neurosurgery did you honestly read during the last year? I read none in neuro-oncology, feeling that such texts are already oldish when printed in ink on paper. Most text books, as they are now compiled and edited, fail to cover their specific fields satisfactorily and to most tastes. Time-locked to the printing date, they cannot match the weekly lists of PubMed references that our librarian emails to us, using our panel of search words, such as glioblastoma*, meningioma* or radiosurgery*. And they cannot match a PubMed search when our next unusual patient raises the question of optimal and individualized therapy. There is one and hopefully long-lasting exception in paper books on neuro-oncology, essential for any disciplined neuro-oncology group: the ‘WHO Classification of Tumours of the Central Nervous System.’ And some books become collectable documents of history; Cushing’s ‘Meningiomas’ is a prime example. …