A colour guide to diagnosis and therapy
Thomas Habif
6th Edition published 2015
ISBN 978-0-323-26183-8
Price £121.99
Dermatology books lend themselves well to providing the reader with a rich, educational and visual experience and this outstanding book is no exception. As would be expected, it is superbly produced and full of a large number of images that are clear and sharply in focus. In addition, there are numerous tables, figures as well as flow charts which enhance the visual experience. The accompanying text is succinct but detailed enough to help a healthcare practitioner such as a GP, learn more about a topic.
This is an excellent one stop, single volume resource which doubles as a combined atlas and textbook of general dermatology that will greatly help a user enhance their knowledge of a specific subject area. The book is now in a mature sixth edition (with the first edition appearing in 1984) and impressively has a single author which is not so common nowadays, and that is a tribute to the immense effort of producing such a resource. This was brought home to me when reading the highly informative preface, the author states that the writing and production took around 2 years. The preface also explains how to get the best out of this book, noting that it is optimised for electronic delivery-more of that later. Also it makes the important point that rare diseases are found in bigger books (so look elsewhere) and that neatly sums up this book. It is for everyday use and interestingly in the preface, the author states he uses it every day.
The inside cover and the next 2 pages has a most helpful disorders index whilst the general layout of the book is logical and the information is easy to find. The depth of information provided is enough to give the reader a good all round review of the topic. For non specialists and GPs, this would be ideal and even for dermatologists; I would suspect this is also a very good refresher and all round reference source. The material is succinct, well written, informative and easy to read.
In addition to a fine textbook there is also the electronic version which comes bundled with the price. Since this is part of the ExpertConsult family, there is an excellent easy to use website and app which has the full contents of the book plus a bit extra. So all the contents of the book are available from any internet connected web browser or app in a supported device. However beware to download the contents to a mobile device is a huge 2 GB download, you will need plenty of room on your mobile device.
All in all, this is an excellent combined print and digital package and a great all round dermatology book which I think represents really good value for money.
Dr Harry Brown
September 2015
Glycosmedia is also available as an App: