Topics covered include hospital-acquired infections, emerging and re-emerging infections, infections in the immunocompromised, in pregnancy and in children. The multidisciplinary text makes it suitable for clinical (and perhaps some more basic) microbiology, public health and infectious disease epidemiology courses. A special feature is the extensive use of illustrative clinical cases (many of them based on real cases seen by the authors), which have been included to reinforce some of the concepts touched upon in that chapter.
The text is organized into chapters on infections of specific organ systems as well as chapters on specific organisms. This has been done to allow the text to be used on a wide variety of different courses, as well as by different student learning strategies. The style as well as the detail of the text varies from chapter to chapter, reflecting the specialties of the individual authors, but also includes standard items, i.e. sections on epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical features, diagnosis and treatment, as well as Q&A sections (with answers in the back) and boxes describing specific areas of interest and relevance in each chapter theme. Other boxes are designed to encourage students to think about certain issues, and here, answers are not provided and the student is encouraged to read further.
The textbook is sufficient for a complete course in infectious diseases, covering all the major pathogen groups (i.e. bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses). It can also be used in specialist modules that may last only one or two semesters, e.g. on hospital-acquired infections, emerging infections, infections of childhood, pregnancy, returning travelers, or the immunocompromised. Teaching can be organized at an organ system level, with specialist modules on specific organisms, e.g. respiratory infections with further detail in a chapter on influenza or infections of the immunocompromised with a specialist chapter on HIV. Although there is extensive cross-referencing between the chapters, each chapter has been written to also stand alone, and the book does not necessarily need to be read in the order in which the chapters are presented.
Since the worldwide severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreaks of 2003, the ongoing
HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the more recent preparedness for a possibly approaching influenza pandemic,
internet resources for infectious diseases have become invaluable for tracking and updating information on infectious diseases worldwide. These include comprehensive, easily navigated websites at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/), the World Health Organization (WHO: http://www.who.int/), and email alert systems like ProMED (http://www.promedmail.org/). In addition, there are now excellent online medical resources, such as eMedicine (http://www.emedicine.com/) and Medscape (www.medscape.com/).
This text incorporates some of these online resources as part of the recommended ‘Further Reading’ in many of the chapters, as it is understood by the authors that the reference journal articles and textbooks, which are also listed, may be less accessible to many readers.
In addition, many of the images used in the book are from freely available online resources, particularly the CDC Public Health Image Library (http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/home.asp), which allows students to download such images (after having been directed to them by the main text) for their own use, either as revision and aidé-memoirs, or for their own presentations. A CD is also included containing other images created specially for this book for similar purposes.
This text has been reviewed by teaching staff at many universities. The authors have taken the feedback/comments seriously and made appropriate amendments to the text to enhance its quality for both accuracy and student teaching.
PART 1 GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES
1 Microbial etiology of disease
2 Structure and function of microbes
3 Host defence versus microbial pathogenesis and the mechanisms of microbial escape
4 Diagnosis of microbial infection
5 General principles of antimicrobial chemotherapy
6 Basic concepts of the epidemiology of infectious diseases
PART 2 A SYSTEMS BASED APPROACH TO INFECTIOUS DISEASES
7 Infections of the skin, soft tissue, bone, and joint
8 Gastroenteritis
9 Cardiac and respiratory tract infections
10 Infections of the central nervous system
11 Infections of the genitourinary system
PART 3 INFECTIONS IN SPECIAL GROUPS
12 Obstetric, congenital and neonatal infections
13 Infections in the immunocompromised host
14 Healthcare associated infections
15 The fever and rash conundrum: rashes of childhood
PART 4 INFECTIONS OF GLOBAL IMPACT
16 Tuberculosis
17 Malaria
18 Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)
19 Viral hepatitis
20 Influenza
21 Infections in the returning traveler
PART 5 EMERGING AND RESURGENT INFECTIONS
22 Viral hemorrhagic fevers
23 Emerging infections I (human monkeypox, hantaviruses, Nipah virus, Japanese encephalitis, chikungunya)
24 Emerging infections II (West Nile virus, dengue, severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus)
25 Diphtheria
26 Agents of bioterrorism
Answers to test yourself questions
Index
Book Details
- Hardcover: 664 pages
- Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (May 19, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1405135433
- ISBN-13: 978-1405135436
- Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.8 x 1.4 inches