Tropical Infectious Diseases: Principles, Pathogens, & Practice
Book Review
Source: Guerrant RL, Walker DH, Weller PF, (eds). Tropical Infectious Diseases: Principles, Pathogens, & Practice. Philadelpia, PA: Churchill Livingstone; 1999. Two volumes; 1644 pages; $195.
This is a comprehensive textbook, with top-notch authors covering the field of infectious diseases in the developing countries of the tropics. This book includes chapters concerning social issues and nutrition, but it deals with them only in their relationship to tropical infectious disease. This text is significantly deeper in its coverage than previous texts; the result is a spectacular success.
The first section is "Principles and General Considerations," which includes chapters dealing with issues such as host-parasite interactions, epidemiology, immunology, and chemotherapy of tropical infections. Section 2, entitled "Pathogens," deals in turn with bacterial and mycobacterial, spirochetal, chlamydial, rickettsial and ehrlichial, fungal, protozoan, nematode, cestode, trematode, viral, retroviral, and ectoparasitic infections. The final section, "Practice Approach to the Patient," deals with symptom or laboratory complexes such as fever and system symptoms, gastrointestinal symptoms, and eosinophilia. The chapters in the latter section are constructed similarly with a set of comprehensive and extremely useful tables dealing with (e.g., in the case of the eosinophilia chapter), "Eosinophilia-associated Diseases and Disorders;" "Key Concepts: Eosinophils in Parasitic Infections;" "Infections Associated with Eosinophilia;" "Factors that Lower Eosinophil Counts;" "Helminthic Infections and Eosinophilia;" "Common Parasitic Causes of Marked Eosinophila;" "Eosinophilia and Remote Tropical or Other Exposures;" "Pulmonary Eosinophilia;" etc. The index appears quite complete.
Comment by Stan Deresinski, md, facp
No one book can be all things to all readers and there may be a few issues with which to quibble. For instance, the text contains a chapter on AIDS and its complications, but devotes only three paragraphs to HTLV-1 and HTLV-II. Nonetheless, this book has set a new standard for texts in the field of tropical medicine, far outshining all other texts with which I am familiar. Both of my thumbs are up!
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