J. Paediatr. Child Health

(2003)

39

, 482–485

Book Reviews

ASTHMA AT YOUR FINGERTIPS, by M Levy, S Hilton,G Barnes and I Charlton; 2002. Sydney: McGraw-Hill.pp. xi + 242; includes index. Price: AU$29.95.

This English publication has been well ‘Australianised’ byDr Ian Charlton, a general practitioner (GP) with a majorinterest in asthma, who is also a member of the Asthma Groupof the National Asthma Council (NAC) Australia. This versionhas therefore been designed to complement the NAC AsthmaManagement Guidelines and the principles of the 6-stepAsthma Management Plan, as well as the recently launched3-plus Visit Plan designed to enhance GP management ofasthma.

As the introduction suggests, the aim of the book is toprovide the patient ‘with information and practical tips whichwill enable you to manage your asthma, reduce the problems itproduces for you and to lead a life that is not restricted by it’.As the subtitle of the book (‘all your questions answered aboutliving with asthma’) indicates, a question and answer formathas been adopted for the bulk of the information, although thisis preceded by a short summary at the beginning of eachchapter. The questions have been patient generated and overallthe information supplied in the answers is sound, up-to-dateand scientifically based, although occasionally it is perhaps toosimplistic or even misleading. The question and answer formatdoes lead to some repetitiveness in the questions, although theconsistency of the responses is likely to be an aid to reinforce-ment of the information. There is also a nice balance betweenthe factual information and the more practical issues surround-ing asthma and its management. The content is comprehensivewith chapters on: What is asthma?, Treatment, Monitoring andControl, Life with Asthma, Children and Asthma, Emergen-cies, Non-medical Treatments for Asthma, and Self-help forAsthma. There is significant paediatric content throughout allthe chapters and the chapter on ‘Children and Asthma’ coverssome specific issues of childhood asthma, principally relatingto differing ages.

While a broad range of childhood asthma managementissues is covered by the questions throughout the book, I wouldhave liked to see more on adolescents and young adults, as thisis clearly a high-risk time for non-adherence as well as asthmadeaths. The book also contains a useful glossary of medicalterms as well as several appendices including pictures of thevarious asthma medications, useful contact addresses, informa-tion about the NAC and examples of the asthma action plan forboth adults and young people.

In summary, I believe that ‘Asthma at your Fingertips’ willprovide a useful source of information for patients and familiesliving with asthma. Its purchase price represents good value formoney for those wanting to improve their knowledge of asthmaand its management. It is also a useful adjunct to the currentinitiatives designed to improve asthma management and hope-fully reduce asthma morbidity in Australia.

PP Van Asperen

Department of Respiratory MedicineThe Children’s Hospital at Westmead

Westmead, NSWAustralia

PRINCIPLES & PRACTICE OF PEDIATRIC INFECTIOUSDISEASES, 2nd edition, edited by SS Long, LK Pickering andCG Prober; 2003. Philadelphia: Churchill Livingstone (avail-able from Elsevier Australia). pp. xxix + 1645; includes index.Illustrated. AU$630.00.

This is one of two large reference books from the USA onpaediatric infectious diseases. It is slightly shorter than its localrival, Feigin and Cherry, and comes in one volume rather thantwo. Even in these days of instant electronic searches, text-books have an important role as an immediate source ofpredigested relevant, referenced information on diverse topics.

A paediatrician might want to use a textbook for variousreasons. One reason might be when confronted with a childwith a particular symptom or a group of symptoms forming asyndrome. There is a section, 57 pages long, which deals withvarious ‘symptom complexes’ including fever syndromes,lymphadenopathy, respiratory tract, abdominal, neurologicaland musculoskeletal symptoms. I enjoyed this symptom-basedor symptom complex-based approach.

A doctor might want to look up the management of aparticular disease, say meningitis. Another possibility is that anorganism is cultured from the patient, and whether common orrare, the doctor wants information on this organism. Addition-ally, there may be specific situations, whether they be burns,bites or intravascular devices, which require consideration.This book has sections that are disease-based, organism-basedand situation-based, and the latter in particular covered acomprehensive and often novel range of situations.

I tested the book on some recently encountered clinicalproblems. It was extremely helpful regarding a child withKawasaki disease who failed to respond to two doses ofintravenous immunoglobulin, discussing treatment optionswhich a literature search had not revealed. It was excellent onliver abscess. But the brief sections on typhoid fever anddengue did not help in the management of a child from SriLanka with this differential diagnosis. Although this mightsuggest a weakness on imported tropical infections, the sectionon malaria is far more comprehensive.

This book is a valuable resource for paediatric infectiousdisease physicians. General physicians who do not have accessto a paediatric infectious disease physician should try topersuade their hospital library committee that this book isworth the price.

D Isaacs

Department of Immunology & Infectious DiseasesThe Children’s Hospital at Westmead

Westmead, New South WalesAustralia

MANAGEMENT OF PERINATAL INFECTIONS, edited byP Palasanthiran, M Starr and C Jones; 2002. Sydney: Austral-asian Society for Infectious Diseases. pp. viii + 54.

This monograph consists of a series of algorithms for manage-ment of 14 topical perinatal infections – infections that cause somuch angst for patients and care givers alike. All the ‘TORCH’infections are covered but particularly the evermore commonhepatitis viruses B and C. In addition, the bacterial infections

Book Reviews 483

Group B Streptococcus and Listeria, plus viruses such asherpes, parvovirus and varicella – all very much in the publicmind.

There are separate algorithms for the antenatal, intrapartumand birth periods and then for the care of the neonate. Diag-nosis and management plus also prognosis are covered. Thealgorithms are easy to read and give clear concise instructionsthat general practitioners and subspecialists alike will finduseful. However, the colouring of the presentation (multipleblack boxes of the algorithms) is somewhat harsh. In additionthere are notes to expand and clarify the guidelines and theseare all backed by up-to-date references.

The book is small enough to be kept as an office deskreference. The backing of the Australasian Society of InfectiousDiseases increases the authority of the manual as well asmaking it particularly appropriate to the Australian population.This is a highly recommended publication.

RR Haslam

Neonatal MedicineWomen’s & Children’s HospitalNorth Adelaide, South Australia

Australia

PRACTICAL CHILD and ADOLESCENT PSYCHO-PHARMACOLOGY, edited by S Kutcher; 2002. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. pp. xiv + 467; includes index.Price: AU$120.00.

The title of this book is somewhat of a misnomer. While not an

impractical

text, the material is not organized in a manner thatallows the clinician ready access to information about psycho-tropic drugs and their prescribing. Rather, in keeping with othertitles in the Cambridge series of monographs on child andadolescent psychiatry, it is a scholarly review of the availableliterature, and the authors refrain from offering advice based onpersonal experience. Interestingly, the editor of the text haspreviously published a more idiosyncratic single author bookon child and adolescent psychopharmacology that would betterfit the description of ‘practical’.

Although published in the United Kingdom, the authorshipof the book is drawn almost exclusively from North America,which is where the bulk of research funding is being invested inthe field. There has been an attempt to cover drugs notavailable in the United States such as moclobemide and sul-piride, but these agents receive scant mention.

The chapters are organized around disorders or clinicalproblems rather than drugs. The advantage of this approach isthat the focus is the clinical problem rather than the treatment,and it provides an opportunity to summarize the availableevidence concerning the pathophysiology of each condition.The disadvantage is that it has led to redundancy. Safety andtolerability data for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, forexample, are reported in chapters on depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorders, pervasive developmentdisorder, and aggressive behaviour. Unless there is convincingevidence that safety and tolerability vary across conditions,which I doubt, it would make more sense to report these data inone place, perhaps in tabular form. There is good coverage ofchild psychiatric conditions, with the exception of mentalretardation, which I believe should have received a chapter inits own right.

In his introductory chapter, Popper reports there are over 40books about child and adolescent psychopharmacology. Owing

to limited research in the field, books published before the mid1990s remained ‘current’ for several years. This is no longerthe case, and the volume under review suffers the problemof most contemporary textbooks of medicine by already beingout of date. The authors could have countered this problemby directing the reader to sources of current information suchas electronic databases, but this opportunity was missed. Inseveral chapters, papers published in 1994 or 1995 weredescribed as ‘recent’, which makes me wonder for how long thebook was in preparation.

I believe that some of the material reviewed in the bookcould have been omitted. For example, there is little point inreporting efficacy data from open label trials if data areavailable from randomized controlled trials. I thought too muchspace was given over to the review of data from studies inadults, particularly as it was acknowledged by most authorsthat data from adult studies may not generalize to children.Worse, in some chapters a clear distinction was not madebetween data obtained from adult samples and data obtainedfrom children.

On a positive note, paediatricians should find the chapter byCarlson helpful. Although describing the constraints of practicethat occur in the United States owing to managed care, thechallenges facing the clinician are similar in Australia. I likedin particular her discussion of the relative disadvantage ofhaving the bulk of the clinical and social history taken bysomeone else.

With respect to the prescribing of psychotropic medication,paediatricians fall into four groups: (i) those who never pre-scribe; (ii) those whose prescribing is limited to psycho-stimulants and possibly clonidine; (iii) those who prescribe,within accepted clinical guidelines, across the range of psycho-tropic medications; and (iv) those who venture where angelsfear to tread. It will be the paediatricians from the third groupwho are most likely to find the book useful.

PL Hazell

Disipline of PsychiatrySchool of Medical Practice

Faculty of Medicine & Health SciencesUniversity of Newcastle

Callaghan, New South Wales Australia

INTRODUCTION TO EPIDEMIOLOGY, 3rd edition, byTC Timmreck; 2002. Boston: Jones & Bartlett Publishers(available from Blackwell Publishing). Includes index. Illus-trated. Price: AU$151.80.

The third edition of an

Introduction to Epidemiology

describesimportant epidemiological methods and principles in detail. Ithas a chapter about historical events that illustrates how epi-demiological methods have developed and been used to resolvehealth problems.

Overall, the text is comprehensive and good use is made ofdiagrams, large and well-spaced formulae and illustrative sum-maries. The text has a traditional format, with definitions andformulae presented first and the study types later. Throughoutthe text are examples to demonstrate the methods beingdescribed, some of which are about child health. At the end ofeach chapter, exercises are provided that give the reader anopportunity to put into practice what they have just read.

Specifically, chapter two may be useful to health scientistswho have not completed a clinical training but is less relevant

484 Book Reviews

to clinicians. There are a few sections (like appendix 2) that arevery US-centric. However, the information in them can be usedas a guide to the sort of systems that should be explored in anycountry. Relative risk and odds ratio are well defined. However,many epidemiologists would consider relative risk as the analy-sis of choice for a cohort study and not suitable for outbreaks,which is the reverse of this text. In addition, some importantmethodological concepts, like bias, receive limited coverage.

Epidemiology methods are key to clinical epidemiology andform the basis of evidence-based medicine. However, this bookis not about clinical epidemiology. Rather it deals with epi-demiology in a more traditional way, as a method or science forresearch and population health. If you are a clinician who likesto read the instructions before you plug in a CD player, thenyou could use this book as a first step toward some of the moreclinically focussed epidemiology texts. If you are about toembark on a population-health career then this book warrantsexploring as a ‘distance education module’ or reference text.

K Williams

Department of Clinical EpidemiologyThe Children’s Hospital at Westmead

Westmead, New South WalesAustralia

5-MINUTE PEDIATRIC CONSULT, 3rd edition, edited byMW Schwartz; 2003. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams &Wilkins. pp. xxiv + 1057; includes index. Price: AU$154.00.

The 5 minute Pediatric Consult is both weighty and succinctsimultaneously. This 3rd edition (since 1997) has over 100authors drawn from all over the USA. This is an extremelyuseful reference book divided into 90 problem orientated pages(Chief Complaints), 800 pages of specific diseases (alphabeti-cally listed) followed by a number of sections including glos-saries of syndromes and surgical terms, values from thecardiology and general laboratories, over 100 tables dividedinto systems, and a somewhat limited formulary.

One of the strengths of this book is the economy of wordswith a clear and consistent style throughout. The informationis up-to-date, and the range of conditions covered excellent. Itis easy to use for quick reference, but also provides enoughinformation to be very practical. Each problem or diagnosis isdealt with under the following headings: database, differentialdiagnosis, data gathering, physical examination, laboratoryaids, therapy, follow-up and common questions and answers.I particularly liked this last section for the added clinicalperspective it gives the reader. These questions vary from basicexplanations of the scientific basis to interpretation of data towhat to expect parents and carers to ask. Each topic has a shortbibliography that allows further research. I have previouslyreviewed the CDROM version which has the advantage ofproviding hotlinks to appropriate journals and books.

This is an excellent book and good value for money. I highlyrecommend it to individual practitioners and institutionallibraries.

MK Marks

Department of PaediatricsUniversity of Melbourne

Royal Children’s HospitalParkville, Victoria

Australia

MIGRAINE NOT JUST ANOTHER HEADACHE, by V South,N Carson and J O’Sullivan; 2002. Sydney: McGraw-Hill.pp. xii + 173; includes index. Price: AU$24.95.

This is a book that is written for patients suffering frommigraine and contains a specific chapter on migraine in infantsand children. It contains much useful information and thechapters intended for adult patients are certainly applicable foradolescents and much of it also for children. The specificchildhood chapter can be recommended for parents of childrenwith migraine. In fact there is much useful information in thebook that paediatricians and general practitioners would finduseful on updating their knowledge on the subject.

As in all books, one can quarrel with some of the opinionsput forward. From my point of view the emphasis on searchingfor dietary triggers of migraine attacks is over emphasised,even though the author does recognize that the scientific basisfor what she says is ‘scarce’.

All in all, I believe this volume would be a worthwhileinvestment for paediatricians’ or general practitioners’ officebookshelf, for use in patient education for this commondisorder.

PG Procopis

The Children’s Hospital at WestmeadWestmead, New South Wales

Australia

COLOUR TEXTBOOK OF PEDIATRIC DERMATOLOGY,3rd edition, by WL Weston, AT Lane and JG Morelli; 2002.St Louis: Mosby (available from Elsevier Australia).pp. xi + 370; includes index. Illustrated. Price: AU$247.50.

This is a wonderful book, written by three extremely experi-enced American paediatric dermatologists. It is the third editionof a very popular text and has been considerably improved andupgraded. There are more and better colour illustrations, manyremarkably recent references and extra patient instructionsheets.

The excellent problem-oriented differential diagnosis listingis a very helpful feature and is easily found on the inside ofthe front and back covers. This is complemented by numerousboxes of more detailed differential diagnoses, classificationsand useful lists. These features and the fact that much of thetext is oriented along problem-based lines enhance the useful-ness of the book to those without a specific expertise inpaediatric dermatology. The problem-oriented chapters includethose on skin diseases in newborns, immobile and hypermobileskin, disorders of pigmentation – white lesions and brownlesions, bullous diseases and mucocutaneous syndromes, vas-cular reactions, sun sensitivity and skin cysts and nodules.There are also detailed chapters on drug eruptions, disorders ofhair and nails, vascular birthmarks, acne, varieties of dermatitisand all types of cutaneous infection. The sections on drugeruptions and skin nodules are particularly impressive. Whiletrichotillomania is included, true factitial skin disease is animportant omission.

There is a useful summary of the salient points of structureand function of the skin and a section on evaluation of childrenwith skin disease with a helpful problem oriented algorithm.

There are 17 patient instruction sheets which can be photo-copied and given to parents. Some of these may need to bemodified for Australian conditions but the general outline ofmost of them is excellent. These cover a number of common

Book Reviews 485

disorders with an emphasis on management, sun protection,insect repellants and the use of wet dressings.

The figures are almost universally of excellent quality andgreatly enhance the text. The only significant omissions notedby this reviewer were pictures of non-annular neonatal lupusand a haemangioma in a beard distribution which is a markerfor laryngeal involvement. The picture of Kasabach MerrittSyndrome purportedly demonstrates a haemangioma while inthe text it is correctly stated that the vascular lesion in thiscondition is probably never a haemangioma but representsanother type of vascular tumour.

I feel the term Ritter disease should not be retained for theneonatal form of severe staphylococcal scalded skin syndromeas it has led to much confusion. Also the terms port wine stainfor capillary malformation and lymphangioma circumscriptumfor microcystic lymphatic malformation are better abandoneddespite their common usage.

This book is designed for general practitioners, paediatri-cians and dermatologists without a special expertise in paedi-atric dermatology. It is wonderfully suited to these groups andwill be my first recommendation on the many occasions onwhich I am requested to suggest a useful volume. I feel itshould also be required reading for dermatology registrars andtrainees in general paediatrics as a practical introduction topaediatric dermatology. Although they will rely on journals andthe larger texts for more detail, paediatric dermatologists willfind this text most useful for parent/patient education andexplanation.

It is a most attractive and valuable book and can be stronglyrecommended.

M Rogers

The Children’s Hospital Medical CentreWestmead, New South Wales

Australia