Field of medicine: Adolescent medicine.

Format: Hardcover book.

Audience: General pediatricians and internists, family physicians, gynecologists, specialists in adolescent medicine, and mental health professionals treating adolescents.

Purpose: To enable health care providers to recognize and manage the medical, surgical, psychosocial, and gynecologic conditions commonly encountered in adolescents.

Content: This comprehensive text discusses the principles of adolescent medicine as well as the medical, surgical, gynecologic, and psychological disorders that are common in adolescent patients. This edition has 20 new chapters, and most of the original chapters have been updated. Color photographs of excellent quality are provided for the chapters on dermatology and gynecology. The text is directed at a diverse audience, and one unique feature is a chapter that makes recommendations about literature available for patients and their families.

Highlights: This multiauthor text is encyclopedic in scope. Of special note is the well-written chapter on dermatologic problems, which has superb photographs of common dermatoses. Chapters on substance use and abuse, depression, adolescent pregnancy, and sports medicine deserve special mention for their clarity and focus on the adolescent patient. The section on gynecologic, urologic, and sexual issues is consistently well illustrated and referenced.

Limitations: The text is uneven from chapter to chapter, and some duplication of content occurs. For instance, chronic abdominal pain is the topic of two chapters. Occasionally, the organ system chapters provide a comprehensive discussion of a particular topic and yet fail to emphasize the unique aspects of that topic in adolescence. The section on nephrology does not mention dialysis and transplantation in adolescent patients, even though adolescents account for more than half of all children receiving renal replacement therapy.

Related reading: This is the most comprehensive and current text addressing adolescent health care. Textbook of Adolescent Medicine, edited by McAnarney and colleagues (WB Saunders, 1992), is a comparable but less current text. The third edition of Adolescent Medicine, edited by Hofmann and Greydanus (Appleton & Lange, 1997), is slightly less comprehensive but equally current.

Reviewer: F. Bruder Stapleton, MD, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, Washington.