February's Issue of HPB

In the era of electronic publishing and early view it is easy simply to type your question into your chosen search engine and scroll through the results until you have the satisfactory answer. Thus, the relevance of the monthly journal whereby articles are batched into seemingly random collections is increasingly being questioned by the younger readers of the profession. February’s issue of HPB shows that there is still an important place for the monthly issue. In this issue, there is a mix of reviews and original articles addressing a wide range of contemporary topics in HPB surgery. Of the four reviews, three address clinical dilemmas and provide succinct summaries of the contemporary evidence relating to the important and complex clinical questions of how colorectal cancer with synchronous hepatic metastases should be approached. What are the long term outcomes associated with laparoscopic vs. open hepatic resection and is there a role for radiofrequency ablation in patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer? Alternatively, combining a chosen review with a selection of the presented original articles, it is possible to create a theme for a journal club. For example, the systematic review on long term outcomes for laparoscopic hepatic resection taken with the three original articles addressing outcomes of hepatic resection for benign liver lesions, laparoscopic left lateral segmentectomy, as the standard of care, and the role of laparoscopic hepatic resection in patients with cirrhosis provides a setting for robust clinical debate.

The editors at HPB are keen to encourage such debate in a contemporary fashion and would encourage readers to correspond through the journal with the authors to create robust and thought provoking discussion. This is demonstrated by the paper by Strasberg et al and subsequent discussion in the correspondence section suggesting that jaundice is an independent prognostic factor in pancreatic cancer.

Therefore, there is a wealth of information presented in a single monthly issue that can easily be scanned to various levels of detail depending on the individual reader’s preference. It would seem unlikely that a single person has the time to collate all the information provided. For the reader, who invests regular time in the monthly publication, there still seems much to be gained.

To view the table of contents for the February issue please click here

Published on Monday 10th February 2014