key: cord-0034262-einao59u
authors: Wormser, Gary P.; Levine, Jerome F.
title: Infectious Diseases: Hot Topics Edited by Vincent Lo Re, III Philadelphia: Hanley and Belfus, 2004. 395 pp. $29.95 (cloth)
date: 2004-04-15
journal: Clin Infect Dis
DOI: 10.1086/383064
sha: c98dae0cb65086b689abbe39090474ae5cf5882a
doc_id: 34262
cord_uid: einao59u

nan

tance, pharmacokinetics, and clinical use is provided. Each antibiotic mentioned is highlighted in a box labeled "Preparation and Dosage" that contains the drug's proprietary name, preparation dosage, and availability throughout the world. (This feature alone is fascinating when one stops to consider the amount of international travel that occurs on a daily basis. Patients who have traveled abroad may bring these antimicrobials to their clinicians' attention.) Also, the molecular structure, clinical use, and basic pharmacokinetics are highlighted for each agent. This makes for an easily readable text. Readers may find that there are proprietary agents in use that they have never heard about in the United States; it follows that this text has appeal and utility for a worldwide audience.

The third section of the book is perhaps of the most interest to clinicians. Entitled "Treatment," its topics range from sepsis to zoonosis. Each chapter discusses epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnostic issues, and treatment in a general fashion and then discusses them again for specific site infections. For example, in chapter 45, "Infections Associated with Implanted Medical Devices," there are sections on prosthetic joint infections, prosthetic heart valves, pacemakers, intravascular devices, CSF shunts, ventriculostomy-related infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections, and peritoneal dialysis catheter infections. Each segment discusses epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical findings and/or microbiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. There are excellent tables and figures to help the reader organize the salient features or concepts.

This text will be of immeasurable use to infectious diseases clinicians, as well as to clinical pharmacists who have an interest in infectious diseases. The text should also appeal to medical residents, as it has excellent, up-to-date, and detailed information on a wide array of infectious diseases. However, its size may preclude some from purchasing it. Departmental libraries and community hospitals should have this text on their bookshelves. The editors should be commended for putting together a text with truly global appeal and authorship. This highly ambitious, multi-authored text includes 30 chapters written by 17 authors who discuss areas of infectious diseases that they have identified as "hot topics." As the field of infectious diseases changes rapidly, with new antimicrobial agents (e.g., the severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS] coronavirus) being identified that have the ability to quickly spread worldwide and "old" diseases (e.g., smallpox) having the potential to be resurrected as instruments of mass bioterrorism, key information must be disseminated rapidly to the practicing physician.

As the editor states in his preface, the book is intended for primary care physicians, medical students and residents, as well as allied health care providers, such as physician assistants and nurse practitioners. In general, the figures and tables in each chapter provide very useful key diagnostic and treatment information for rapid access by medical care providers. However, as can be anticipated about a book as ambitious as this one, which presents a great deal of clinical material in a condensed form, I found variation in the quality and content of some of the chapters. For example, the chapters on respiratory tract infections (chapters 5-7), soft tissue (chapters 15 and 16), bone and joint infections (chapters 18 and 19), as well as travel medicine (chapters 27-29), were well written, with a concise, readable format. Unfortunately, I found that some of the other chapters were superficial and simply summarized the material from the standard textbooks of infectious diseases almost directly, with only limited references. Other topics were too broad to be included in this book, or were not truly "hot." An example of the former is chapter 22, "Sexually Transmitted Diseases." Although this may be a hot topic in primary care, the guidelines presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May 2002 provide a more concise and equally satisfactory discussion [1] . To try to review the diagnosis and treatment of Lyme disease, as is attempted in chapter 24, is an overly ambitious goal and can only lead to a superficial and unsatisfying discussion. However, chapter 30, "The Principle Agents of Bio-Terrorism," is a well-written summary that is certainly important to the entire medical community.

I applaud Dr. Lo Re for attempting to put together a text that concisely describes so many of the clinical diseases that are encountered on a regular basis by practicing physicians and allied care personnel. However, I suspect that the infectious diseases specialist would have little use for this book. I encourage our infectious diseases fellows to read a standard textbook of infectious diseases rather than the type of condensed material presented in this text. Although it would have been useful to have illustrations included, particularly when discussing some of the skin and softtissue infections, appropriate references are made where these illustrations and photographs can be found.

In summary, although each chapter has a different approach to the clinical issues reviewed, I find that most of the chapters were well written. Also, they were relative-ly well-referenced, which will help those looking for more detailed information. This is a handbook of infectious diseases that are transmissible from animals to humans and vice versa. The first 2 editions of the book were written and published in German. The third edition is also available in German, but, in addition, has been translated into English in order to reach a global readership. Nine distinguished European and American scientists with diverse backgrounds in virology, microbiology, and parasitology have authored the new edition. Their fields of expertise range from clinical practice of veterinary medicine to human occupational medicine and public health. The authors stress the need for close cooperation between medical and veterinary sciences to advance the understanding of zoonotic agents and the illnesses that they cause. The book consists of 4 main chapters comprising discussions of viral, bacterial, fungal, and parasitic zoonoses. An extensive list of subchapters that give short descriptions of well-known diseases, as well as some rare infections, can be found within each main chapter. The list is upto-date and includes discussions about West Nile fever virus, monkey pox virus, coronaviruses (e.g., the severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS] agent), as well as the prion disease agents that have caused recent disease outbreaks among humans and/or animals in the United States. The book has 456 pages, and the more than 230 subchapters are, by necessity, relatively short and concise descriptions of infectious syndromes. However, the length of each subchapter and the relative weight of the discussions about epidemiology, clinical presentation, pathophysiology, laboratory diagnosis, treatment, and prophylaxis vary for each of the individual subchapters and undoubtedly reflect the individual authors' personal clinical experiences and research interests.

Several of the subchapters in the section on viral zoonoses include descriptions of recommended PCR techniques for detection of specific viral pathogens and list specific primer sequences and corresponding bibliography references. This type of information may not be relevant to some readers, since specific epidemiologic or clinical conditions on one continent may be different from those on other continents; furthermore, the procedure details may already have become outdated by the time of the book's release. This information could also be potentially misleading, since the listed primer references, for the most part, have been limited to single articles. The subchapters in the sections for bacterial, fungal, and parasitic infections do not contain sections about diagnostic PCR techniques.

One of the main limitations of this book is the lack of an introductory chapter that considers an approach to patients

Sexually transmitted diseases treatment guidelines 2002