Neurological and Neurosurgical Intensive Care (Ropper, Neurological and Neurosurgical Intensive Care)

The standard text and reference on neurological and neurosurgical intensive care is now in its Fourth Edition--thoroughly revised to incorporate the latest therapeutic advances and insights from the most recent clinical trials. A team of distinguished neuro-intensivists offers practical, state-of-the-art guidelines for managing the wide range of problems arising in postoperative neurosurgical care and care of patients with acute neurological diseases. This edition focuses sharply on the details of therapeutics. The authors, from leading neuro-intensive care units, have written the book collectively, giving it more cohesiveness and more of an authoritative consensus voice than previous multiauthored editions. Doody Review Services Reviewer: David J. Dries, MD(University of Minnesota Medical School) Description: This is the fourth edition of a multiauthored textbook of critical care of the patient with acute neurological conditions. Purpose: An overview is provided on clinical management strategies for acute neurologic conditions including new therapies and insights derived from recent clinical trials. Audience: Neurosurgeons, neurologists, and intensivists providing care for medical and surgical neurologic patients are an appropriate audience for this work. Editors and authors represent leading centers for neurological and neurosurgical critical care in the United States. Features: The book begins with a review of general principles of critical care of patients with neurologic conditions. Among topics covered are pulmonary and cardiovascular management, fluid derangements, brain death, infection, and electrophysiologic monitoring. A second group of chapters describe more specific problems including head injury, stroke, subarachnoid hemorrhage, Guillain-Barr? Syndrome, status epilepticus and spinal cord injury. Chapters are clearly written with texture of type dividing content portions. Tables are well used along with line drawings. Photographs, however, reproduce with inconsistent quality. Each chapter contains a reference list of primary sources. References date to within three years of publication. A brief table of contents lists only chapters by title while the index of approximately 15 pages includes separate citations for figures and tables. Assessment: This is a valuable update in an important area. I particularly appreciated the discussion of head trauma, recognizing that neurologic dysfunction is the most important determinant of outcome following various forms of injury. This edition comes almost a decade after the previous edition. It is long overdue. This new edition incorporates the progress of clinical medicine, including a large number of new therapies and clinical insights from various trials and series which have clarified many previously opaque problems. For established intensivists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, and emergency room physicians, the material presented is ment to serve as a guide for effective and thoughtful practice as synthesized by experienced neurointensivists. Neurologists, neurosurgeons, and anesthesia and the critical care physician who are intrigued by the nervous system and its disease should also find the text provides for them a basis for furthur study and clinical work.