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Doody's Review ServiceReviewer: Alain F. Broccard, MD (University of Minnesota Medical School)
Description: The authors have put together a manual derived from the larger and well respected third edition of Fishman's Pulmonary Disease and Disorders with the worthwhile goal of providing readers with a handy, up-to-date manual of pulmonary medicine.
Purpose: Whether they have succeeded in their task, however, is debatable. Such a manual would clearly be useful but given the pace of knowledge change, providing readers with an up-to-date manual is a difficult goal to achieve.
Audience: The audiences for this book, written by 23 contributors with various backgrounds, is broad and includes students, respiratory therapists, residents, internists, pulmonary fellows and, possibly, busy pulmonary physicians.
Features: The book covers the entire spectrum of pulmonary disease including the clinical approach, diagnostic procedures, and the surgical aspect. The section on occupational and environmental disorders is well written and informative. Other sections are, however, weaker and already outdated. The chapter on the diagnosis and management of asthma, for instance, is quite short given its importance and does not incorporate the most recent guidelines. Similarly, the discussion and classification of interstitial lung disease is outdated. The same, however, could, be noted about many manuals and textbooks. The book contains some useful tables, but figures and algorithm are rare and underutilized.
Assessment: Despite its shortcomings, the book includes some sections definitely worth reading and there is a place for a manual that provides a quick and a reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date overview of pulmonary medicine. This book is somewhat unique in that it is too big and heavy to be view as handy manual to carry around, but it has more depth than other classic manuals.