A. M. Joussen, T. W. Gardner, B. Kirchhof, S. J. Ryan (eds): Retinal Vascular Disease

Excerpt

This is a truly staggering compendium with four editors, 117 contributors, 64 chapters, and 780 pages. As for references, there are too many to count. It is produced delightfully, with a huge number of color illustrations incorporated into the text, and tastefully shaded abstracts with highlighted paragraphs of essential summaries. For example: familial exudative vitreoretinopathy is allocated 14 pages and contains (apart from the text) 39 illustration of the fundus (13 diagrammatic and the rest, colored fundus photographs of various types) as well as two histological illustrations, two graphs, two complex diagrams, one table, and a fluorescein angiogram. What riches! And yet this is all contained on a format slightly smaller than A4, and so fine is the paper that the volume is easily held in the hand. Moreover, there is (or should be) a unifying underlying theme. The recent discovery of cytokines has lead both to an explosion of research, and also a whole new field of medical treatment, and this, as the foreword states, is the raison d’être for the whole enterprise. Undoubtedly then, this book is an information-mine for present and future investigators, when preparing their own manuscripts and the reviewer is certain that he will frequently haul it down from his shelf. …