Description

Imaging in Anaesthesia and Critical Care
Gregory Hobbs and Ravi Mahajan
Churchill Livingstone
ISBN 0-4430-5310-3

This book contains six chapters and 182 pages written by a mixture of consultants drawn from anaesthesia, intensive care, paediatrics, medical physics and radiology. The six chapters deal with the theory of imaging as well as specific chapters on the heart lungs, head and neck, the spine and the abdomen and pelvis. Each of the chapters is clearly written, with short paragraphs, bullet pointed lists and boxes containing key points. As you would expect there are many pictures of images and these are clear and easy to read, partly because of the high quality glossy paper that the book is printed on and also because of the arrows etc pointing out the salient points. Each of the chapters is authoritative and relevant to treating the critically ill patient.

No book is perfect and this one has a few minor points that could be improved. The section on the chest Xray talks about the rotated film, but not in as much detail as I would have liked. This is the commonest problem I find with Chest Xrays in the ICU. Unfortunately, rotated films often fool junior clinicians and some examples of this might have helped them to identify this problem.

There are no references in the text, an understandable decision since in this type of book they do tend to disrupt reading. However, all that is provided is a reading list at the end of the book. This contains only eight titles and five are on safety or related issues. One of the eight is in the British Medical Journal, one a set of guidelines from the Royal College of Radiologists and the rest specialised radiology text books. I would have liked to see more from the general, more readily available literature.

Despite my criticisms most of the book is very good, the section on interpretation on cervical spine films is masterful and should be read by all caring for the injured patient. Usually after I review books I put them in departmental library, this one I think I will keep for my own use be it patient care or teaching.

Reviewed by:
Gilbert Park
Director of Intensive Care Research
John Farman ICU
Addenbrooke’s Hospital
Cambridge CB2 2QQ