Book Review
Urinary Stone Disease: The Practical Guide to Medical and Surgical Management
N Engl J Med 2008; 358:1529April 3, 2008
- Article
Urinary Stone Disease: The Practical Guide to Medical and Surgical Management
(Current Clinical Urology.) Edited by Marshall L. Stoller and Maxwell V. Meng. 694 pp., illustrated. Totowa, NJ, Humana Press, 2007. $189. ISBN: 978-1-58829-219-3Stone disease of the urinary tract is one of the most common reasons for hospitalization in the United States. The lifetime risk of stone formation is estimated to be between 5 and 10%. The medical and surgical approaches to the treatment of stones in the urinary tract have been written about since antiquity. In the past few decades, technological developments have resulted in considerable advances in the surgical treatment of urinary tract stones.
Marshall Stoller and Maxwell Meng have brought together a who's who of recognized urinary stone experts from the United States and other countries in a book that covers the history, chemistry, evaluation, and treatment of urinary stones. It is not a textbook, but instead a series of articles focused on individual topics related to urinary tract stones. Most of the authors are urologists, so the book tends to emphasize the surgical approaches to treatment, and most of the chapters are authored cooperatively by junior and senior faculty persons. This format results in varied writing styles among chapters.
The medical approaches to the treatment of recurrent stone disease are not well delineated in this book, and they are buried in the chapters within the section on metabolism. The surgical chapters, however, are comprehensive and give a good overview of treatment options, outcomes, limitations, and potential complications. This compendium would have been enhanced by more comprehensive discussions of approaches to the prevention of recurrent stone disease and of risk factors for developing stones, as well as delineation of what is not known about stone disease.
The book is not a “how-to” guide for practitioners, but it is an excellent academic review of up-to-date knowledge about stone disease. It will be useful not only to urologists, but also to other clinical specialists who treat patients with stone disease — such as emergency room clinicians, nephrologists, endocrinologists, and generalists. It provides reliable information about treatment and prognosis that will be helpful to practitioners when they discuss chronic stone disease with patients and their families.
Leroy M. Nyberg, Jr., M.D., Ph.D.
National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892
nybergl@mail.nih. gov - Citing Articles (1)
Citing Articles
1
R. R. Wauer, C. C. Roehr, . (2010) International Perspectives: Report on the International Seminar on Surfactant and CPAP in Extremely Low Gestational Age Neonates, Vienna 2009. NeoReviews 11:7, e343-e348
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