Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd
Blue Sky Offices Shoreham, 25 Cecil Pashley Way, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, BN43 5FF, UNITED KINGDOM
Litt’s Drug Eruption & Reaction Manual
30th Edition
Edited by Neil Shear
Price (Hardback): £120
When a book hits an impressive 30th edition, you know it has been successful. Although a new edition should never rest on its laurels, this one is excellent and should appeal to a wide range of healthcare professionals. Many people may not have heard of this book (myself included before this review) but it does provide significant and substantial support to prescribers. Since prescribing is a mainstream activity and adverse drug reactions are an important clinical issue, this book has a lot to offer.
It is not a textbook of clinical pharmacology as such but lists about 1,500 commonly used drugs in an A-Z format (the bulk of the book). Each drug heading starts with a standard format which is trade name, indications, class, half-life, important drug interactions, use in pregnancy, important contraindications and sometimes a note and a warning. Then follows an individualised list of drug reactions grouped under body systems and each reaction is followed by a number which corresponds to the number of reports in the medical literature. The references are not listed in the book, presumably due to space considerations, but are listed in the book’s companion website.
Although the A-Z format constitutes the bulk of the book, there are some very useful appendices at the end of the book. This includes descriptions of important reactions (have you heard about Baboon Syndrome?!), and then a long list of drugs that cause these reactions. This is followed by drug class reactions, genetic associations and finally, a list of trade and generic names.
There is a huge mountain of data here which clearly has taken a massive amount of time to assemble and assimilate into a coherent and understandable format. I think this is a superb book but this type of rich data collection is ideally suited to a website where unlimited space allows more extensive and relevant information to be introduced with the added bonus of having an easily searchable interface. Fortunately, included in the purchase price of this book is 12 month access to the companion website, which is brilliant.
According to the home page, there are 1,846 drugs with 73,777 reactions with 158,978 references on PubMed. While these statistics will change on a daily basis, they are impressive nonetheless. Since this could lead to complex searches, the good news is that this website is well designed. On the homepage, there are four tiles offering different search mechanisms. You can search by drug or herbal supplement, by indication or reaction, and finally, by manufacturing company. This is very simple to use and very effective.
The book and 12 month website subscription is not cheap but it makes for a quality offering. However, it does make me think, having website access for all NHS staff would be a boon. I have no idea how much an institutional license like this would cost, however, in this budget constrained era, I guess this would be quite far down the list.
Dr Harry Brown is a retired GP, Leeds and Medical Editor of Pavilion Health Today