Article Text

Download PDFPDF

Fanaroff and Martin’s neonatal-perinatal medicine diseases of the fetus and infant, 8th edn, Vols I and II
  1. G C Millman

    Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Edited by Richard J Martin, Avroy A Fanaroff, Michele C Walsh. Elsevier: Published by Elsevier Mosby, 2006, £158.00 (hardback), pp 1820 (intrauterine growth retardation). ISBN 0-323-02966-3

    Having formally accepted the invitation to review this new edition, which, I have to confess, had never been one of my favoured texts on neonatology (always favouring the UK books), I noticed the fact that the title included the term volumes 1 and 2. Oh dear! I had also forgotten the impending major football event in Germany, which was sure to fill my spare moments more readily than what I was now expecting to be an extremely detailed American textbook. This would appear not to be the “grab from the shelf” pocket handbooks that seem to be increasingly popular on special care baby units but are obviously limited in the depth of discussion they can undertake.

    Fortunately, I was surprised to find this a very readable and useful reference text. The editors in their introduction note that trying to condense the practice of perinatal and neonatal medicine into even a two-volume, 52-chapter, 1800-page textbook is becoming quite a challenge, as several of the chapters are worthy of textbooks in their own right, but they have made an excellent job of achieving it.

    Most chapters are organ or system based and begin with a scene-setting developmental embryology and physiological description of the relevant topic. These sections are interesting and informative, but probably slightly too detailed at times for most readers. Without laboriously listing the contents, there are interesting details on the history and emergence of neonatal care, including some fascinating details on the development of neonatal care and the bizarre concept of the “premature baby and incubator sideshows” common in the late 1890s. I suppose these were the forerunner of the current plethora of reality documentaries on all things medical. Sections that deal with ethics and practising evidence-based perinatal or neonatal medicine and neonatology in developing countries are covered well and are not often featured in other texts. Excellent chapters on perinatal ultrasound, intrauterine growth retardation, placental pathology, fetal effects of autoimmune disease, pregnancies complicated by diabetes, metabolic bone disease, neonatal eye disease, hearing loss and orthopaedics are available. Most of the chapters are well illustrated with clear tables, intermittent algorithms, mainly non-colour photos and appropriate examples of ultrasound, computed tomography scans and magnetic resonance images.

    As always, my ultimate test for any textbook is whether it can help in providing the answers to a difficult clinical scenario or question. I compiled a list of several common and uncommon problems that always cause me consternation and that are often not dealt with well, and decided to put the authors to the test. Managing hypoglycaemia, investigating possible metabolic disease, problems with intersex, neonatal seizures, congenital infection, disorders of the head (shape and size), issues regarding surfactant treatment, neonatal neutropenia and neutrophilia, meconium syndromes, congenital urinary tract malformations, neonatal thyroid disease and many others were covered well and relatively concisely. I certainly came away with my knowledge improved and my thoughts clearer on these and other topics.

    As with all American texts, some topics, particularly the chapters on legal issues and normal values, are less relevant to the UK reader, but legal issues still raise some important issues. The chapter on skin disease, although useful, could have been greatly improved by replacing the images used with colour ones. I would have preferred to see some evidence-based “key points” summary boxes in those areas in which the evidence is either convincing or confusing, but these are minor criticisms of an otherwise excellent text.

    The price tag for this textbook is a hefty £158.00, and so represents a large investment for either the department or the individual. However, if you are looking for a new reference text that extensively covers the discipline of perinatal and neonatal medicine for both generalist and specialist, then I would certainly recommend including this book in your shortlist.