Field of medicine: Internal medicine and pulmonary disease.

Format: Hardcover book.

Audience: Internists, pediatricians, pulmonologists, and allergist-immunologists.

Purpose: To define the factors that contribute to death due to asthma and to provide ways for clinicians to prevent fatal outcomes with appropriate therapy.

Content: This compendium of 34 review articles summarizes various aspects of fatal asthma, including epidemiology, pathophysiology, natural history, socioeconomic risk factors, respiratory infections, atmospheric pollution, the use of ß₂ agonists, patient compliance, and recommendations for assessment and treatment.

Highlights: The book is well organized and has useful tables, graphs, and figures that illustrate and prioritize key concepts. The references are relevant and timely.

Limitations: Although the book is informative and well written, it is somewhat long and sometimes repetitive.

Related reading: No other text of this size is devoted entirely to the topic of fatal asthma. Most other texts on asthma, such as Asthma and Rhinitis, edited by Busse and Holgate (Blackwell Science, 1995), have several chapters on fatal asthma. Most of these chapters address ß₂ agonists, the epidemiology of death from asthma, and the pathology of fatal asthma but do not explore death from asthma in the depth that this text does.

Reviewer: Leslie C. Grammer, MD, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Illinois.