St. Paul’s surgeon stars in Gray's Anatomy (the book, not the TV show)

Dr. Sam Wiseman says his teenage children were disappointed to find out the Gray’s Anatomy textbook he spent years working on had no connection to the TV show by the same name.

But seeing the 653-page book published was a proud moment for Wiseman, a surgeon at St. Paul’s Hospital who helped edit a new medical textbook, Gray’s Surgical Anatomy. The first edition of the new surgical textbook was published late last year.

Gray’s Surgical Anatomy is the newest member of the “family” of Gray’s Anatomy textbooks. The first Gray’s Anatomy was published in 1858 and, having gone through 42 revisions since, is still considered a top anatomy textbook and an international bestseller. It inspired the name of the American medical drama Grey’s Anatomy that first aired in 2005 and is now in its 16th season.

Wiseman was inspired to write a surgical textbook a few years ago.

“The first edition of a book is very challenging because it has to be born from somewhere,” he said. 

In this case, the birth was the result of the St. Paul’s surgeon along with U.K. doctor Peter Brennan, anatomist and editor-in-chief of Gray’s Anatomy Susan Standring, and hundreds of surgeons from around the world, including several from B.C.

Wiseman said regular anatomy textbooks concentrate on “the structure of the body as it exists in an undisturbed form.”

During surgery, “the normal location and orientation of anatomical structures is changed” and often there are “distortions” caused by the condition the surgeon is trying to treat.

 His idea was to create a book “focused on the anatomy the surgeon encounters during operations.” That required consultation with expert surgeons during the lengthy process of writing the textbook.

Wiseman hopes the new Gray’s Surgical Anatomy, a copy of which he proudly displays in his office, will become the go-to resource for would-be and current surgeons, much like Gray’s Anatomy has become for doctors.

With files from Providence Health Care.