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Practical Cardiovascular Medicine
Second edition
Elias Hana
Price £97.95
This is a very impressive offering from a single author, and the title clearly echoes the ethos of the book. It is a towering review of the whole speciality, clearly aimed at specialists who are either established or in training, and is hugely and impressively detailed. The book is a paperback and runs to 963 pages, including the index. It is fact-packed and features a generous amount of text, accompanied by a significant volume of diagrams, images, and tables.
The book is full of excellent, valuable, and informative in-depth knowledge, presented in clinically focused detail. The text is broken into small paragraphs, and there are also plenty of useful figures and tables, which help to amplify the text.
It is meticulous in its coverage and well-written, which is impressive given that this appears to be a single-author textbook. This is a substantial contribution to promoting the practice of high-quality cardiovascular medicine. This would make an excellent reference book, allowing clinicians to quickly look up a topic and become refreshed with significant and relevant updated information on the specific topic in need of study.
The breadth of coverage is remarkable, and for those who wish to explore further, there are numerous additional references provided at the end of the chapter. In addition, each chapter ends with questions and is followed by the answers (thankfully!), which again enhance knowledge and make learning more interactive and interesting. The author deserves credit for providing this instrumental facility.
This excellent book can be a one-stop shop for specialists and hopefully answer the majority of questions arising from daily clinical practice; if not, further reading may be helpful. This book is probably too detailed for GPs (unless they have a special interest) or medical students and is clearly aimed at cardiology specialists and associated staff. From a medical point of view, I think that both speciality trainees and established consultants would find this book a handy addition to their personal library.
As a random deep dive into the book, I decided to read around the topic of heart failure. This is a common condition, and Chapter 4 at page 103 (finishes at page 155) is devoted to this topic. It is a superb, detailed, and highly readable description of the condition, presented in a logical and comprehensible manner. The text is broken into small chunks with clear headings and a sensible layout with text boxes, and the depth is impressive. The pharmacological coverage is superb and will provide a complete and supportive guide to anyone prescribing or monitoring a patient with heart failure. This specific chapter ends with questions (38 of them), and the answers follow. The chapter ends are heralded by the appearance of reference pages, 10 of them.
There is a companion website that does not include the book’s text, which is a shame, but it does offer online questions and answers, which are helpful. However, overall, the book is excellent and represents superb value for money, serving as a highly detailed and comprehensive reference source for cardiologists. Highly recommended for specialists in cardiology.
