These assembled papers are edited transcripts of didactic lectures given by mainly senior residents, but also some distinguished attending and guests, at the Grand Rounds of the Michael and Marian Ilitch Department of Surgery at the Wayne State University School of Medicine.

Every week, approximately 50 faculty attending surgeons and surgical residents meet to conduct postmortems on cases that did not go well. That “Mortality and Morbidity” conference is followed immediately by Grand Rounds.

This collection is not intended as a scholarly journal, but in a significant way, it is a peer-reviewed publication by virtue of the fact that every presentation is examined in great detail by those 50 or so surgeons.

It serves to honor the presenters for their effort, to potentially serve as first draft for an article for submission to a medical journal, to let residents and potential residents see the high standard achieved by their peers and expected of them, and by no means least, to contribute to better patient care.

— David Edelman, M.D.