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(Circulation. 1999;100:566-567.)
© 1999 American Heart Association, Inc.

Book Reviews

Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine

Eric Topol. 2760 pp. Philadelphia, Pa: Lippincott Raven; 1997.$125.00. ISBN 0–397-51592–8.

Christopher P. Cannon, MD

Cardiovascular Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Mass

	Introduction

 
Dr Topol's Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine is an excellent embodiment of the current era of evidence-based medicine. The editor, Dr Eric Topol, is a leader in the field of clinical trials in cardiovascular medicine, and this approach comes through in his textbook. As he states in the preface, his purpose is to bring forth currently available information from clinical trials to guide the management of cardiac patients. This textbook is an up-to-the-minute compendium of the new data available from clinical trials in cardiology today. Indeed, many of the figures included are from articles still in press or from trials that have been presented but not yet published.

The presentation of the data is very clear and again is based on the trials. There are numerous figures and tables (between 20 and 40 per chapter) that help illustrate the data being discussed and also allow readers to quickly review the data in each chapter. For example, in the chapter on congestive heart failure treatment, the authors have compiled the mortality curves from the 20 major trials and plotted them all on the same scale to show on 1 page both the relative and absolute amounts of benefit of the various treatments (eg, ACE inhibitors, ß-blockers).

The structure of the text is excellent: it is divided into 8 sections, each with a world-renowned section editor. The 8 sections are very natural subcategories of cardiology and thus become very useful minitextbooks. First, there is a 12-chapter review of Preventive Cardiology. This begins a . . . [Full Text of this Article]