Field of medicine: Dermatology.

Format: Softcover book.

Audience: Dermatologists and primary care physicians.

Purpose: To serve as an easy-to-use reference on cutaneous side effects of more than 250 common prescription and nonprescription medications.

Content: This guide is a state-of-the-art reference on common adverse skin reactions. It starts with a thorough list of generic and trade names of common medications, which are detailed in the body of the book. The major section is an easy-to-use alphabetic guide that provides generic names of medications and their half-lives, drug interactions, adverse cutaneous reactions, and selected references. Additional features include a description of the most common reaction patterns and their causes and a brief atlas illustrating these reactions.

Highlights: Excellent organization, cross-referencing of trade and generic names, and categorization of reaction patterns make this guide particularly user friendly.

Limitations: Larger photographs would enhance the usefulness of the atlas.

Related reading: This guide is a briefer version of Litt's Drug Eruption Manual 1997 (Parthenon, 1997) and follows the same format. Similar books include Bruinsma's A Guide to Drug Eruption: The File of Medicines (International Book Distributors, 1994) and the more thorough Cutaneous Drug Reactions: An Integral Synopsis of Today's Systemic Drugs by Kaspar (Karger, 1992).

Reviewer: Howard Kurshenbaum, MD, Kaiser Permanente, La Mesa, California.