| This paperback, pocket-sized book is a revised second edition and consists
of a set of clinical pharmacology revision notes. The book is aimed at
medical students and junior doctors. The authors have chosen what they
believe are the most common medicines used in secondary health care practice.
It was originally written by three medical students (now in practice)
from examination revision notes. This book is claimed to be a study aid
and a user-friendly reference on the wards.
Doses of medicines have been omitted, since they are not considered relevant
to students, and the authors have included only the interactions, adverse
effects and contraindications that they think are important. The authors
suggest consulting the British National Formulary for more information.
Organised into a directory of 127 medicines (compared with 105 five years
ago) in 183 pages, using a body-systems approach, each section is prefixed
with a set of management guidelines. It is strange that in this age of
evidence based information there are no national guidelines mentioned
or any other evidence-based source listed.
A reasonable attempt has been made to cover most therapeutic areas and
only four topics listed in the BNF are not covered in this book, ie,
malignant disease, nutrition and blood, the eye and the ear, nose and
throat. It would have been useful if the order of presented sections
matched the BNF. There are also no illustrations to support some of the
complex pharmacological explanations. The content seems to be lacking
in some areas:
- The low molecular weight heparins are hardly mentioned and there
is nothing said about the use of heparins in reduced renal function
- There
is no mention of tiotropium
- It is not helpful to have discontinued
medicines (from 2001) like reproterol and tulobuterol still listed
- Administration of vancomycin has little data
listed but is a common problem in secondary care and the spelling
of this drug seems to vary
in the text
- The Heaf test is no longer available
- Bendrofluazide has not been changed
to the current name (bendroflumethazide) when other drugs in the
text have
- There is a lack of information on Cox-2
inhibitors and their problems, with rofecoxib being indexed to
p100 but there is no mention of this
on p100
With all these discrepancies, this revision is not complete and requires
more work.
On a more positive note the text is easy to read in bullet form and it
is a nice idea to show the value of mnemonics to memorise lists of medicines.
As a study aid in clinical pharmacology this book is limited but may
be of use to someone. As a practical reference on the wards I would not
recommend its use. I would advise the use of the BNF.
Andrzej Kostrzewski
Senior principal pharmacist at St Thomas’s Hospital
Teaching Unit, London |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal