Clinical Critical Care Medicine (textbook and CD-ROM).

Abstract

Emulating a film critic's approach to commentary, the reviewers supply two thumbs up for Clinical Critical Care Medicine, a beautifully illustrated, first edition, internationally multiauthored textbook.These impressions represent the thoughts of a neuroplastically facile, recently certified, intensive care unit (ICU) attending trained in medicine, pulmonary, and critical care who is currently completing an anesthesiology residency, complemented by those of a gray-bearded, balding senior attending who remains active as an intensivist, internist, and anesthesiologist.The senior reviewer also has coedited two multiauthored Critical Care Medicine textbooks, appreciates what an undertaking that is, and has had the pleasure of contributing to or reviewing several other ICU books.We base our humble opinions on visual assessment, weight, format, readability, and utility of addressing important concepts as well as securing commonly accepted factual knowledge.Like any text, this one has a few deficiencies, but it packs a tremendous amount of information and expertise into a fairly modest sized package that will not deplete mitochondrial adenosine triphosphate stores when it is pulled from the shelf or carried from an office.The utility of the book was tested further by the first author reading it as part of her preparation for board certification while the other reviewer did the same as part of his maintenance of certification program.Visually, this is a pleasing and impressive book that supplies a plethora of highly informative pictures, radiographs, tables, graphs, boxes, diagrams, and flowcharts.There is often more information contained within the visual assets than in the text.Chapters are well edited, easily read, and formatted in a fairly consistent manner, given the voice of more than 110 authors who represent a multidisciplinary view of critical care practitioners that is almost universal, lacking mainly in representation from the continent of Antarctica and medical centers north of the Arctic Circle.Each chapter starts with a Key Points introduction that highlights features and take-away points contained in the chapter.Chapters are modestly referenced using a suggested reading format.References seem to be readily available and for the most part timely, although it is always a challenge to remain up to date.The book has a publication date of 2006, but there are no references later than 2004 and few beyond 2002.Therefore, several recent sentinel pieces such as the American Thoracic Society's position paper on "Guidelines for the Management of Adults with Hospital-acquired, Ventilator-associated, and Healthcare-associated Pneumonia" are not included or were not available at the time of production. 1 The textbook is a "tweener" in size and weight.It is not a handheld or pocket, soft cover text, nor is it a comprehensive tome potentially associated with shoulder dislocations or rotator cuff tears.The book is composed of 10 sections, 7 of which are rather classic system-based presentations directed toward frequently encountered ICU problems and pathologies such as gastrointestinal hemorrhage, pancreatitis, and acute liver failure in the Gastrointestinal section.The opening section on Basic Biology of Critical Care Medicine provides a unique starting point for the textbook and consists of five superb chapters on the common mechanisms that drive life-threatening illness, including a brief overview of genetics/genomics, a burgeoning area of investigation that is likely to play an increased role in individualizing care of the acutely ill and prognosticating outcomes.The remaining two sections focus on global therapeutic, diagnostic, and procedural interventions and the unique aspects of ICU organiza-David O. Warner, M.