Book Review

Cardiology

N Engl J Med 2001; 345:1580November 22, 2001

Article

Cardiology
Edited by Michael H. Crawford and John P. DiMarco, with 14 others. 1614 pp., illustrated. New York, Mosby, 2001. $139. ISBN: 0-7234-3138-8

Several large textbooks of cardiology — or more accurately, cardiovascular disease — have been published in the past few years. This book is an entirely new textbook with a modern and carefully constructed format.

Books on cardiology during the earlier part of the 20th century were moderate in size in relation to more recent tomes. They were single-author books in which the author, often rather specifically, expressed a personal view with respect to a particular medical problem. Times have changed. With the advent of personal computers, access to the Internet, the immense progress in the presentation of graphics, and advances in teaching techniques, the role of the large textbook is less clear, even misty. Indeed, in the future, the role of such books is likely to be limited, except as a resource to be found in libraries. This book, however, takes advantage of new developments in publishing and could buck the trend.

The paper in the book is of high quality, but as a consequence, the book is bulky and heavy, weighing in at 5.1 kg (11.2 lb). This is not a book to be browsed through or rested on the knees. It is comprehensive, dividing the overall topic of cardiovascular disease into eight major sections. The chapters in each section are written by well-known and leading authorities. The book is full of practical advice and presents cases as typical examples. The graphics, so important in cardiology for the presentation of electrocardiograms and echocardiograms, are of exceptionally high quality. Apparently, the figures can be downloaded from a Web site free of charge by any purchaser of the book.

I have only two quibbles with Cardiology. The first is that there is no specific section on history taking or the elucidation of physical signs; coverage of these topics is instead disseminated throughout the various sections. The same is true of hemodynamics and echocardiography. The second quibble is that this book has an international authorship and claims to be seeking a global readership, but it contains little about the global problem of cardiovascular disease and, in particular, about how cardiovascular disease should be managed in places where resources are limited. Moreover, cholesterol values are often given in milligrams per deciliter without conversion to millimoles per liter; this is a particular problem for the presentation of guidelines or recommendations that are intended to have international application. In general, however, this book is a major contribution to the published literature on cardiology and sets new standards against which future books will be assessed.

Philip A. Poole-Wilson, M.D.
Imperial College of Medicine, London SW3 6LY, United Kingdom