Book Review

Inflammatory Bowel Disease

N Engl J Med 1993; 329:1361October 28, 1993

Article

Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Edited by Gunnar Jarnerot, with John Lennard-Jones and Sidney Truelove. 593 pp., illustrated. Malmo, Sweden, Corona/Astra, 1992. Price not available. ISBN: 91-564-0890-0

This book is intended for physicians and surgeons who treat patients with inflammatory bowel disease. In the preface the editors state that their aim was “to present the state of knowledge of inflammatory bowel disease in a reasonably compact volume.” Thus, the challenge that the editors faced was to balance conciseness with the depth of information required for physicians who treat patients with ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease to appreciate the pathophysiology of these disorders and its application to diagnosis and treatment. For a physician like myself, trained on the eastern seaboard of the United States, the book also offers the possibility of learning about the European style of treatment for inflammatory bowel disease.

Unfortunately, however, the effort by the editors to limit the size of the book has made it mundane reading for the experienced practitioner. Moreover, in a short, single-subject textbook, one would expect an abundance of excellent figures and tables, but many of the figures and tables in this book are poor and are not placed close to the relevant text. The book also suffers from lack of an overall index. Although each chapter begins with a very careful and extensive index, this sort of index is very awkward to use in a reference book. Despite these problems, there are two chapters that I think are excellent: “Nursing Care of a Patient with a Stoma or Abdominal Fistula,” by Myers, and “Glycoproteins in Inflammatory Bowel Disease,” by Podolsky.

In summary, this is a book that will probably have little appeal for the practicing gastroenterologist and surgeon treating patients with inflammatory bowel disease. It is doubtful that it will displace the classic textbook edited by Joseph Kirsner and R.G. Shorter, Inflammatory Bowel Disease (3rd ed. Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger, 1988).

Marvin D. Berman, M.D.
Truesdale Clinic, Fall River, MA 02720