Book and Product Reviews

Published by Oxford University Press

Edited by Max Weston, Rachel Campbell, Nandini Vallath, Stephen Ward and Jo Wells

ISBN 978-0-19-874565-5

Published September 2019

Price £32.99

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-handbook-of-palliative-care-9780198745655?cc=gb&lang=en&

Palliative medicine is a discipline that transcends many medical specialties and it can involve complex clinical care but ultimately delivering it properly can be a very worthwhile experience for a healthcare professional and their team. However, it may be that some general and standard medical textbooks and resources may not supply enough information to help a clinician satisfactorily fully manage a palliative care patient. In the past, I have sometimes referred to previous editions of this excellent handbook and was most interested to see the latest edition and how that shapes up.

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Seventh edition

Edited by Adam and Paul Staten

Published by Elsevier (August 2019)

ISBN 978-0-7020-5552-2

Price £54.99

https://www.uk.elsevierhealth.com/practical-general-practice-9780702055522.html

Considering there are so many GPs in the UK, there is a not such a large selection of practical books specific to primary care to help and support GPs and associated staff at the coalface. However, this book is certainly one to consider and it does exactly what the title says. This is no easy feat, as primary care requires a huge depth of knowledge over a substantial topic area and all help is genuinely appreciated. I have used previous editions of this excellent book before and I am delighted to see it has moved with the times. This new edition covers a huge array of topics at the right level and depth to help a frontline GP and other primary care clinical staff to deal with day to day clinical problems.

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David Semple and Roger Smyth

Published JULY 2019 by Oxford University Press

ISBN 978-0-19-879555-1

Price £36.99

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-handbook-of-psychiatry-9780198795551

This is another brilliant addition to the excellent Oxford Handbook series which seems to go from strength to strength. This is a very chunky handbook and in fact is really a fully blown textbook encased in a handbook size and runs to a chunky 1148 pages including the index. Even so the dimensions remain the same as other books in the Oxford Handbook stable, although it is much thicker than many.

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9^th Edition

By John Guillebaud

ISBN 978-0-8153-9349-8

Published CRC Press in July 2019

£38.99

https://www.crcpress.com/Contraception-Today-Ninth-Edition/Guillebaud/p/book/9780815393498

Any book on contraception written by this author is well worth looking at. He is a well-known and long-standing author on this topic and I have known him in the past to write with clarity, authority and brevity. So, it was great interest that I looked at this new edition authored by this highly respected authority and I was not disappointed.

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Edited by Helen Turner, Richard Eastell and Ashley Grossman

Oxford University Press (Published July18)

ISBN 978-0-19-967283-7

Price £70

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-desk-reference-endocrinology-9780199672837?q=978-0-19-967283-7

I suspect many healthcare professionals have heard of the Oxford Handbook Series which is excellent and very useful for front-line healthcare use. However, there is another series by the same publishers which may not have the same high profile but sometimes can be equally helpful-that is the Oxford Desk Reference series. As the title suggests, the books tend to be bulkier and this one is a hard back and is more of reference book rather than a portable handbook. I would consider this (rightly or wrongly) the bigger sibling of the Handbook equivalent. Irrespective of the series, this book is an excellent volume covering many aspects of endocrinology.

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Second edition

Mark Miller, Jennifer Hart and John MacKnight

Published by Elsevier (May 2019)

ISBN 978-0-323-56894-4

Price £116.99

 

https://www.uk.elsevierhealth.com/essential-orthopaedics-9780323568944.html

Put simply, this outstanding book is truly superb and I could just leave it like that and you would have a fair idea on what I think about this great book. But it is only fair for me to explain a bit more on how I came to this conclusion. The main intended audience of this book are health care professionals who are not primarily orthopaedic specialists (though some may also find this helpful). It is primary care physicians, specialist nurses, physiotherapists, musculoskeletal specialists amongst others who will find this book very helpful. Considering the bulk of orthopaedic care does not take place in a specialist clinic or operating theatre but in many disparate primary care settings, this gives this book a potentially wide audience.

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4^th edition

Editors Jay Keystone, Phyllis Kozarsky, Bradley Connor, Hans Nothdurft, Marc Mendelson and Karin Leder

Published by Elsevier (January 2019)

ISBN 978-0-323-54696-6

Price £110.99

https://www.uk.elsevierhealth.com/travel-medicine-9780323546966.html

Travel medicine is not a mainstream medical speciality but it is an important one all the same. Occasionally we may be asked by our patients about fitness to travel or the impact of their medical condition on their travel plans. Sometimes in primary care, we are asked to formulate a travel plan and organise a vaccination schedule for some of our patients. Sometimes a travel medicine intervention can be straightforward and sometimes this can be complex and there is a need for help from a quality reference source. Fortunately, there are some excellent websites to help us such as the UK based https://travelhealthpro.org.uk/ (mentioned in page 541 of the book) but there will also be a demand for access to a trusted textbook style reference source.

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Edited by Laura Mitchell, Bridie Howe, D. Ashley Price, Babiker Elawad and K. Nathan Sankar

Published May 2019 by Oxford University Press

ISBN 978-0-19-878349-7

Price £34.99

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-handbook-of-genitourinary-medicine-hiv-and-sexual-health-9780198783497?cc=gb&lang=en&

Don’t be put off by the slight awkwardness of the title of this book, is it a good description of the subject matter covered in this excellent book. This book is a superb addition to the personal or departmental library for both specialists in sexual health and for practitioners in primary care. Speaking as a GP, there are not that many books around that would help healthcare professionals in primary care in these topic areas and this book would easily fit this requirement. As is often the case for many members of the excellent Oxford Medical Handbook series, they are more than just handbooks.

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Jayashri Srinivasan, Claudia Chaves, Brian Scott and Juan Small

Published by Elsevier (May 2019)

ISBN 978-0-323-55476-3

Price £74.99

https://www.uk.elsevierhealth.com/netters-neurology-9780323554763.html

As a medical student, I became enthralled by the skill and artistry of Frank Netter’s superb medical images and they helped me a lot. Now in later years, his drawings have been upgraded and the image bank enhanced by modern additions and new books carrying his name (he died in 1991) have appeared. One of them is this new edition of Netter’s neurology.

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Second Edition

By A. Sahib El-Radhi

ISBN 978-1-138-31752-9

Published CRC Press in March 2019 £46.99

https://www.crcpress.com/Paediatric-Symptom-and-Sign-Sorter-Second-Edition/El-Radhi/p/book/9781138317529

This is an excellent way of learning about paediatric symptoms and signs, especially in unwell children. These children can present to a number of different facilities such as primary care, walk in centres, Accident and Emergency departments as well as of course paediatricians. As we all know, it is not always easy to assess a child and it can be sometimes difficult to make the correct diagnosis in an unwell child. This helpful book is different from a standard medical textbook as it does not classify diseases into systems as such. Also, it does not take the traditional approach of reviewing causes, presentation and management of a particular condition. Of course there is nothing wrong with that but this book allows another dimension of learning, reference and education and it does it well.

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Edited by John Reynard, Simon Brewster, Suzanne Biers and Naomi Neal (4^th Edition)

Published April 2019 by Oxford University Press

Price £34.99

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-handbook-of-urology-9780198783480?cc=gb&lang=en&

You have to hand it to Oxford University Press, they continue to relentlessly churn out superb books in their outstanding Oxford Medical Handbooks series and this book is no exception. Like many of its siblings in this series, it is more than just a simple handbook. This is a very good textbook of urology ideal for both trainees and generalists within the speciality as well as primary care personnel.

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23^rd Edition

Stuart Ralston, Ian Penman, Mark Strachan and Richard Hobson

ISBN 978-0-7020-7028-0

Price £52.99

https://www.uk.elsevierhealth.com/davidsons-principles-and-practice-of-medicine-9780702070280.html

Published by Elsevier (April 2018)

I have a strong emotional attachment to this textbook and its predecessors; I started using this book as an undergraduate many moons ago and I used it intensively until I qualified. Through the years as a postgraduate, I have used many editions of the book and found it just as useful. So it was with great pleasure I looked at this book’s latest incarnation, the 23^rd edition.

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Edited by Jane Sturgess, Derek Duane and Rebekah Ley

Published November 2018 by Oxford University Press

ISBN 978-0-19-874985-1

Price £24.99

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-medics-guide-to-essential-legal-matters-9780198749851?cc=gb&lang=en&

This is a superb book whose title accurately describes what lies between the covers, an essential guide on legal issues of interest to doctors and associated healthcare professionals. It is not a dry legal book but actually quite easy to read and dip into.

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By James Ritter, Rod Flower, Graeme Henderson, Yoon Loke, David MacEwan and Humphrey Rang

Published by Elsevier (January 2019)

ISBN 978-0-7020-7448-6

Price £52.99

https://www.uk.elsevierhealth.com/rang-dales-pharmacology-9780702074486.html

I have always been a big fan of having a good knowledge base about pharmacology, after all this forms the basis of a commonly used therapeutic tool, namely the prescribing of a therapeutic drug. It is a fast moving field, continuously changing and requires prescribers to keep regularly up to date. There is no shortage of material to assist the prescriber and for some people; this excellent textbook will be a welcome addition to their personal library.

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3^rd Edition

Edited by David Cooper and Jennifer Sipos

Published CRC Press published December 2018

ISBN  978-1-138-57723-7

Price £125

https://www.crcpress.com/Medical-Management-of-Thyroid-Disease-Third-Edition/Cooper-Sipos/p/book/9781138577237

This excellent and relatively slim (it runs to over 300 pages) book does exactly what it says on the title. This is a superb yet detailed review of thyroid disease and its medical management and according to the preface, it is 10 years since the second edition appeared. So, I would guess a lot has happened in the interim and I am sure for many thyroid specialists, this is a welcome addition to their support system when dealing with patients.

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Edited by Luke Cascarini, Clare Schilling Ben Gurney and Peter Brennan

2^nd Edition

Published August 2018 by Oxford University Press

Price £32.99

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-handbook-of-oral-and-maxillofacial-surgery-9780198767817?cc=gb&lang=en&

For many medics, this is a topic area (Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery) that lies out at the edge of our education and expertise and this should not always necessarily be the case. As a GP, sometimes our only involvement is simply referring onto the specialty or dealing with a painful acute toothache but I am sure many non specialists and those at the beginning of their career would want to learn more about this topic from a book that is pitched at the right level. Equally this could apply to people at the midpoint of their career.

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My Health Explained

When I first came across My Health Explained it was with some scepticism that I decided to review it. My initial reaction to such online help programmes is ‘Oh no! not another one!’ – but I have to say that this support and educational package for people with diabetes has proved to be the exception to the misrule.

Written by a consultant Diabetologist, My Health Explained is far more than just another package of dry information about diabetes, listed in a cold and impersonal way. Rather, it is a personalised online video-based diabetes education program for people with type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, and gestational diabetes, that explains exactly what diabetes is, and why that matters.

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By Gavin Clunie, Nick Wilkinson, Elena Nikiphorou and Deepak Jadon

4^th edition

Published August 2018 by Oxford University Press

Price £34.99

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/oxford-handbook-of-rheumatology-9780198728252?cc=gb&lang=en&

In the acknowledgement section of the book which is at the beginning, it is stated that some contributors have helped “to establish the Oxford Handbook of Rheumatology at the market leader small textbook for rheumatology”. That does not really surprise me; the Oxford Handbook series continues to go from strength to strength as some of its many constituents are refreshed and updated on a cyclical basis. This excellent book is now in its 4^th edition and recently updated as it was published in late 2018. It may be small in size but it packs in 750 pages within the handbook.

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5^th edition

Lead Editors. Myron Yanoff and Jay Duker

Published by Elsevier (October 2018)

ISBN 978-0-323-52819-1

Price £257.99

https://www.uk.elsevierhealth.com/ophthalmology-9780323528191.html

Just simply looking at this book generates a “wow” it is a massive yet handsome hardback book that runs to just over 1400 pages. It is a heavy book to lift and in a way is a throwback to the good old-fashioned medical textbook tomes that we used to see. In itself that description is a complement, however this is no old-fashioned textbook. This is a superb modern uptodate textbook of eye disorders that covers its topic in superb detail. This is a proper textbook that is a great resource.

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Edited by Mehul J. Desai

ISBN 978-0-19-935094-0

Published July 2018 by Oxford University Press

Price £81

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-spine-handbook-9780199350940

I was impressed by the title as not many books concentrate on the spine (from top to bottom and more) in such a way. So this is a refreshing and interesting method to review an important human structure that can cause so many clinical problems which are often not always easy to treat. The title states “handbook” understates it’s impressive and detailed contents as this is a chunky 66o page good sized book that covers it’s topic in ample and impressive detail.

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