General Surgery

The core objectives of the Course of General Surgery and Surgical Therapy are the knowledge and the understanding of the most frequent and demonstrative diseases which need a surgical therapy. The first step is to be able to recognize the type of disease, whether or not it is based on anatomic, functional, metabolic, infectious, inflammatory or neoplastic features.
The learner should be able to prescribe the best diagnostic tests on the basis of their sensitivity and specificity to reach a conclusive diagnosis.
The indications for the surgical operation should be recognized on the basis of the possibility of complications ( acute or chronic) and the prognosis of the disease under the different therapeutic conditions.
The student should understand the general principles of the surgical treatment, the possibility of a mini-invasive approach, the main technical characteristics of the operation, the possibility of complications, the need of complementary therapies. It is also important a good knowledge of the tests to be performed during follow-up and of the long term prognosis.
These objectives are reached by full frequency (>70%) of the lessons, as lectures, clinical case presentation, interactive discussion and problem-solving sessions. The learner can approach the patients under tutor supervision in the outpatients clinic, operative room, emergency department, and in-house daily visits and consults. During the clerkship, the learner will perform all the procedures listed in the core curriculum of the program of the Medicine and Surgery Course.

At the end of the course, the student must be able to:
- Recognize the clinical picture of the main surgical diseases and to classify them into the main diagnostic macro-categories.
- Prescribe, examine and discuss the the results of the tests and investigations useful to reach the right diagnosis, and to classify the neoplastic diseases.
- Identify the cases which need a surgical operation instead of medical therapy, endoscopic, radiologic or radio-therapeutic measures.
- Describe the surgical principles and the main steps of the surgical treatment of the most common surgical diseases, with evidence on the mini-invasive approach when appropriate.
- Categorize and describe the risk of post-operative complications and long-term side effects.
- Establish the prognosis and long-term follow-up of the patients.

To access to the final examination, the student needs a positive judgement on his clerkship by the tutor. The examination consists on the reporting of a clinical case assigned by the Professor the same day of the test.