Cover

Editors: McPhee, Stephen J.; Papadakis, Maxine A.; Tierney, Lawrence M.

Title: Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment, 46th Edition

Copyright 2007 McGraw-Hill

> Front of Book > Preface

Preface

Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment 2007 is the 46th annual volume of this single-source reference for practitioners in both hospital and ambulatory settings. It emphasizes the practical features of clinical diagnosis and patient management in all fields of internal medicine and in specialties of interest to primary care practitioners and to subspecialists who provide generalist care.

Outstanding Features

• Medical advances up to time of annual publication

• Detailed presentation of all primary care topics, including gynecology, obstetrics, dermatology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, psychiatry, neurology, toxicology, urology, geriatrics, preventive medicine, and palliative care

• Concise format, facilitating efficient use in any practice setting

• More than 1000 diseases and disorders

• Only text with annual update on HIV infection

• Prevention and cost information

• Easy access to drug dosages, with trade names indexed and prices updated in each edition

• Annotated recent references, with unique identifiers (PubMed, PMID, numbers)

• Twelve months of free access to CMDT ONLINE

Intended Audience

House officers, medical students, and all other health professions students will find the descriptions of diagnostic and therapeutic modalities, with citations to the current literature, of everyday usefulness in patient care.

Internists, family physicians, hospitalists, nurse practitioners, physicians' assistants, and all primary care providers will appreciate CMDT as a ready reference and refresher text. Physicians in other specialties, surgeons, pharmacists, and dentists will find the book a basic internal medicine reference. Nurses, nurse-practitioners, and physicians' assistants will welcome the format and scope of the book as a means of learning medical diagnosis and treatment.

Patients and their family members who seek information about the nature of specific diseases and their diagnosis and treatment may also find this book to be a valuable resource.

Special to this Edition

• Major revisions of the heart chapter, including extensive updating of valvular heart disease

• Updated immunization tables presenting the latest guidelines for adults

• New drug regimens for lipid disorders

• Expanded discussion of antiphospholipid syndrome

• Enhanced description of squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx

• Updates on emerging infectious diseases such as West Nile virus, avian influenza, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)

• Palliative care information integrated throughout the text

• Developments in HIV infection, including new treatment regimens and the role of antiretroviral drug resistance assays

• New information on alternative medicine and complementary therapies

• Drug information, bibliographies, and Web sites updated through June 2006

• Update on antibiotics, including new antiviral and antifungal agents

• List of key Internet addresses for current peer-reviewed medical information, including:

  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traveler's and immunization information

  • National Institutes of Health Consensus Statements

  • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality of the United States Public Health Service Clinical Guidelines

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank our associate authors for participating once again in the annual updating of this important book. Many students and physicians also have contributed useful suggestions to this and previous editions, and we are grateful. We continue to welcome comments and recommendations for future editions in writing or via electronic mail. The editors' and authors' institutional and Internet e-mail addresses are given in the Authors section.

Stephen J. McPhee MD

Maxine A. Papadakis MD

Lawrence M. Tierney Jr. MD

San Francisco, California

September 2006