Field of medicine: HIV medicine, AIDS medicine, and home care.

Format: Softcover book.

Audience: Family members and nonprofessional caregivers of persons with HIV infection or AIDS.

Purpose: To provide reliable information on and practical approaches to the home care of persons with HIV infection or AIDS.

Content: This book contains 24 chapters, 11 of which deal with the evaluation and home management of symptoms commonly encountered in patients with HIV infection or AIDS. Each of these chapters defines a symptom; reviews common causes of the symptom; and suggests appropriate responses, including when and how to contact a health care provider. Other chapters describe prevention of the spread of HIV in the home, psychosocial concerns, access to community assistance, and end-of-life issues. Appendices offer limited information on U.S. and Canadian HIV resources, names of common opportunistic infections, and names of frequently used medications.

Highlights: Descriptions of important, common medical symptoms are well written and are directed to a lay audience with a high-school education. Guidelines for determining when a symptom may require urgent medical intervention are presented early in each chapter. Because the information provided by caregivers to medical personnel is commonly misinterpreted, the authors offer advice on how to present focused information on patient symptoms. Home treatment suggestions are uniformly thoughtful and appropriate.

Limitations: Most patients with HIV infection or AIDS are intellectually competent long into the course of their disease, and many have already coped with at least some of the symptoms described in the text. In addition, many caregivers are infected with HIV and are knowledgeable about the disease. Persons who have experience with AIDS or home care may be put off by the elementary level of some of the advice in this book. The listing of national and community resources is poorly organized and substantially incomplete.

Related reading: Few books offer guidelines to the lay public on home care of the HIV-infected patient. Persons with HIV infection or AIDS and their caregivers may be best served by Grief and Golden's AIDS Care at Home (J Wiley, 1994). In addition to giving reliable advice on symptom management, this book offers nonjudgmental information on issues ranging from infectious precautions for the caregiver to safer sex techniques for the spouse or partner and how to set up a durable power of attorney and a living will. Sach's When Someone You Love Has AIDS (Dell, 1995) is less useful for symptom management but contains helpful information on end-of-life legal and financial issues. Eidman's The AIDS Caregivers Handbook (St. Martin's Pr, 1993) offers primarily anecdotal responses to home care issues and is seriously limited by outdated treatment plans.

Reviewer: Susan L. Hansen-Flaschen, MSN, CRNP, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.