Vol. 17 •Issue 12 • Page 39A
Book Review
At Last! A Definitive Text for Neonatal Ventilation
At last! The definitive text on neonatal ventilation has hit the market. Assisted Ventilation of the Neonate is complete, concise, informative, well-written, well-referenced and very affordable text.
The authors, Drs. Jay Goldsmith and Edward Karotkin, have compiled the ultimate team of contributing authors for this text. The list of contributors reads like a Who’s Who of neonatal pulmonary medicine. Besides the book’s editors, the list includes such well thought of names as Drs. John Kinsella, Jay Milstein, Michael Weiss, Alan Spitzer and Thomas Wiswell, to name but a few.
Each facet of the science of neonatal pulmonary medicine is well represented. Discussions of physiologic and anatomic formation of the neonatal respiratory systems are covered in individual chapters. Resuscitation, legal and ethical issues of care of the non-viable also merit their own chapters.
Other chapters include nutritional support and its importance and related issues surrounding transport. Conventional ventilation techniques, be they pressure-controlled (PCV), volume-controlled or continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), are covered in full, including advantages, disadvantages and sequelae to each.
Chapters on intra- and post-operative management of the neonatal airway and complications are presented as well. Case management and ventilatory management are covered and lend credence to the information in “real world” scenarios. A whopping 34 appendices are added to this text to give the reader a complete arsenal of at-your-fingertips information about everything currently available for neonatal assisted ventilation.
Assisted Ventilation of the Neonate is a must-have text for any clinician involved in the management of the neonatal airway. A cost of $99 for this 608-page gem is the biggest bargain I’ve found in medical literature today. Informative, easily navigated, and presented by some of today’s most knowledgeable physicians and practitioners in the field of neonatal pulmonary medicine, this book should have a prominent place reserved for it in every nurses’ station, staff room, neonatologists’ office and respiratory care office nationwide.
Assisted Ventilation of the Neonate is available from Saunders Co, Curtis Center, Independence Square West, 625 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19106. Call 800-545-2522. Cost of the 608-page softcover book is $99. ISBN# 0-7216-9296-6.
About the Reviewer: Dave Kissin is a practitioner and educator at Maine Medical Center, Portland.
Assisted Ventilation of the Neonate
By Drs. Jay P. Goldsmith and Edward H. Karotkin
Published by Saunders Co. 2003
608 Pages $99
