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Gibson P. Evidence-based respiratory medicine. Oxford: Blackwell BMJ, 2005.

Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust
Oxford, UK

Key Words: evidence-based medicine

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The stated aim of Evidence-based respiratory medicine is to provide clinicians with a desktop reference that summarises published information and provides advice in specific situations to advance patient care. Its 550 pages are divided into 6 chapters, each with its own editor.

The first chapter discusses practising evidence-based diagnosis and therapeutics. The next 5 chapters cover specific diseases, with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and pulmonary infection providing the bulk of the book. The final 2 chapters cover respiratory failure, sleep disordered breathing, interstitial lung disease, pleural disease, pulmonary hypertension, and thromboembolic disease.

The contents clearly reflect the worldwide burden of airways disease. However, like all evidence-based texts, it is naturally weighted to those areas with the most studies and systematic reviews. I was surprised to see an intervention as important as smoking cessation could justify only 5 pages in comparison to the 7 that corticosteroid induced osteoporosis could fill. . . . [Full text of this article]