Primary Pediatric Pulmonology - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879934646 ISBN 13: 9780879934644

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001

Synopsis

This book is designed to be an evidence-based, practical guide to the day-to-day management of respiratory illnesses in childhood. It is not meant to be an exhaustive review, but rather focuses on the most common and important problems, with emphasis on evaluation and treatment. All contributors are experienced clinicians, writing as specifically as possible and giving their own opinions based on their own experiences in practice. The book''s 14 chapters cover topics including the evaluation of chronic or recurrent respiratory symptoms, stridor and noisy breathing, apnea, and asthma. Several chapters are devoted to asthma and related issues, including an overview chapter that provides extensive background on this all-too-common childhood affliction.

The material covered in this book will interest Pediatricians, General Practitioners, Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, Allergists, Pediatric Surgeons, Otolaryngologists, and others wanting to learn more about the common and serious pulmonary illnesses in children.

About this title

About the Author

Allen J. Dozor, MD, Chief of Pediatric Pulmonology, Allergy, Immunology and Sleep Medicine. He is professor of pediatrics and clinical public health, chief of the Division of Pulmonology, Allergy and Sleep Medicine, director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center of the Hudson Valley, director of the Armond V. Mascia, M.D. Cystic Fibrosis Center and associate physician-in-chief at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital at Westchester Medical Center. He divides his time between patient care, teaching and research. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania State University and completed his residency at St. Vincent’s Hospital and Medical Center in New York, N.Y. and a fellowship at Children’s Hospital, Boston, Mass.

The material covered in this book will interest Pediatricians, General Practitioners, Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, Allergists, Pediatric Surgeons, Otolaryngologists, and others wanting to learn more about the common and serious pulmonary illnesses in children.

The material covered in this book will interest Pediatricians, General Practitioners, Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, Allergists, Pediatric Surgeons, Otolaryngologists, and others wanting to learn more about the common and serious pulmonary illnesses in children.

Reviews

There are at least four large, comprehensive textbooks on lung disease in children. Primary Pediatric Pulmonology is more a handbook of pediatric lung disease and focuses on evaluation and treatment of common disorders. Thus, the book is unique in concept, but does it achieve its goal?

The 14 chapters are by experts in the field. The first chapter, on the evaluation of chronic or recurrent respiratory symptoms in children, contains numerous practical points. Next comes a chapter on noisy breathing and stridor in infants, which contains fewer key points and is vague on the time required for spontaneous resolution of laryngomalacia. What do you tell the parents? However, there follows an excellent discussion of apnea in infants. The sudden infant death syndrome is discussed briefly, but there is no mention of the significant reduction in incidence when sleeping babies are placed in the supine rather than the prone position (the ``back to sleep'' initiative). This is an important practical point for the primary care physician.

Obstructive sleep apnea in children is well covered. The chapter on wheezing and croup in infants is also excellent; it contains a list of important questions related to wheezing and a useful algorithm for diagnosis. Discussion of the treatment of bronchiolitis is disappointing. The primary care physician needs to know what drugs to use and why as well as the dose, route of administration, and duration of treatment. This information could have been easily presented either by highlighted key points or in tabular form.

The next three chapters deal with childhood asthma. They discuss epidemiology, morbidity, mortality, and urgent and hospital care of asthma. The discussion of the management and prevention of asthma is practical and gives a stepwise approach to the use of ``controller'' and ``reliever'' drugs and guidelines for referral to an asthma specialist.

The final chapters discuss bronchopulmonary dysplasia, cystic fibrosis, pneumonia, and tuberculosis. The chapter on cystic fibrosis, one of the most thoughtful in the book, is written specifically for the primary care physician. The book ends with a novel chapter on pediatric office-based smoking intervention. Both active and passive smoking are major public health problems, and the addiction frequently has its origins in adolescence. Very useful ``ask hints,'' ``advise hints,'' and ``assist hints'' are found in the chapter.

This book, meant for primary care physicians, suffers from some of the problems of larger textbooks. Sometimes the main focus of the book seems lost, and there are important omissions, such as hyaline membrane disease, pneumothorax, meconium aspiration, bronchitis, and bronchopneumonia. I suspect that primary care physicians are more involved with such lung diseases than pulmonologists. Some of the individual chapters are outstanding, but overall I can give this book only a lukewarm recommendation.

Victor Chernick, M.D.
Copyright © 2001 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0879934646
• ISBN 13: 9780879934644
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296
• Editor: Dozor MD Allen J.