SECTION EDITOR
NORIG ELLISON
Book and Multimedia Reviews
Basics of Anesthesia, 4th Edition
Stoelting, RK, Miller RD. New York: Churchill Livingston, 2000.
ISBN 0-443-06573-X. 507 pp. $65.00.
The fourth edition of Basics of Anesthesia has as its stated goal to
provide a “concise source of information for the entire community
of students of anesthesia, including medical students, physicians in
training, and established practitioners.” This is an ambitious goal,
but one that is attained quite effectively in this concise and easily
read textbook.
After a brief overview of the discovery and development of
current anesthesia practice, the book is divided into six main sec-
tions covering broad areas such as the pharmacology of inhaled and
injected agents, anesthetic techniques and perioperative concerns,
and anesthetic considerations for special patient populations and
procedures. Sections on postoperative care and consultant anesthe-
sia practice precede the appendices, covering published standards
relating to anesthetic care. The chapters and individual sections are
short enough to be easily read and understood at one sitting, and
the number of references cited is intentionally limited. Ample two-
color line drawings and diagrams complement the text, which is
also color highlighted.
Basic topics such as uptake and distribution of inhaled agents, IV
anesthetics, and local anesthetics are concisely covered in 10 –15
pages. New to this edition is a chapter dedicated to opioid agonists
and antagonists, which were covered under IV anesthetics in pre-
vious editions. The authors have added information on emergent
technologies such as transesophageal echocardiography and Bispec-
tral index to the chapter on monitoring, The emergence of office-
based anesthesia as a new area in anesthetic practice is reflected in
broadened coverage in the chapter titled “Outpatient Surgery–
Hospital, Surgicenter or Office-Based.”
Although it is not meant to be an exhaustive, highly referenced
textbook, this new edition of Basics of Anesthesia will continue to be
an excellent core textbook for students and early residents in train-
ing, and probably would be useful as a refresher course text for
practicing anesthesia providers. A full understanding of the com-
plexities and intricacies of the practice of anesthesia will not be
achieved through reading this book, but that is not the authors’
intended goal. The improvements in the fourth edition will keep
Basics of Anesthesia as one of the benchmarks against which other
introductory anesthesia texts are measured.
Daniel J. Kennedy, MD
Assistant Professor
Department of Anesthesiology
Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Winston-Salem, NC
Anesthesthesia and Renal Considerations; Volume
18, Number 4 (December 2000) of Anesthesiology
Clinics of North America
Jerome F. O’Hara, Jr., MD, editor Philadelphia: WB Saunders.
ISSN 0889-8537. 289 pp. $134 annual subscription for four issues.
In editing Anesthesiology Clinics of North America’s December 2000
issue, the editor issued himself a substantial challenge. He offers in
1360 Anesth Analg 2001;92:1360–1361
his preface that the content of this volume “provides a concise
reference for anesthesiologists and intensive care physicians caring
for a patient in jeopardy of or with renal failure.” Although the
volume does succeed admirably in covering the aspects of renal
topics relevant to anesthesiologists and intensivists, the concision
and organization of the effort are at times wanting. The most salient
difficulty is with redundancy. With the exception of a fairly super-
fluous introductory overview chapter, the first six chapters are well
written and informative, and stand well as individual reviews. In
particular, Garwood’s article on new pharmacologic options for
renal preservation, although not exhaustive, provides a fine sum-
mary of the current approaches and state of progress of the field.
However, there are numerous instances in which the same material
regarding the pathophysiology and management of acute renal
failure is discussed by the different authors in these chapters, mak-
ing reading of this part of the volume somewhat tedious. Aggres-
sive editing by more specific restriction of the various authors’
subject matter might have avoided this problem.
By contrast, the remaining eight chapters in the volume have
virtually no overlap, and are nearly uniformly well-constructed and
thorough reviews of selected subtopics. Particularly enjoyable chap-
ters included Dr. O’Hara’s summary of data regarding low-dose
“renal” dopamine and Prough’s review of physiologic acid-base
and electrolyte changes in acute and chronic renal failure. The
former consists of a balanced assessment of a persistently contro-
versial subject that manages not to proselytize; the latter is a suc-
cinct distillation of the essentials of acid-base and electrolyte disor-
ders in renal failure patients, a topic frequently encumbered with
confusing tables, formulas, and algorithms. Chapters addressing
anesthetic concerns for specific procedures on the genitourinary
system make ideal reviews for a resident or a practitioner seeking to
refresh knowledge of the relevant issues. Sladen’s chapter review-
ing anesthetic concerns for the patient with renal failure should be
in every anesthesiology resident’s collection.
Inevitably, in an era in which the doubling time of medical
knowledge keeps shortening, the interval between the time these
chapters were written and when the volume was published has seen
new information become available that could supplement what is
presented. For instance, recent data showing poor correlation be-
tween weight-based dosing of dopamine and resultant plasma drug
levels were not included in the discussion of “renal” dopamine.
Similarly, some newer developments in experimental renal protec-
tion agents could not be included. Consequently, this collection falls
somewhere between textbooks, which are notoriously obsolete by
the time of publication, and a state-of-the-art review. For the prac-
titioner of cardiovascular or urologic anesthesia and for the surgical
intensivist, this is a worthwhile reference, and the procedure-
focused chapters provide perfect resident instructional material.
Clinical researchers would find the extensive bibliographies useful,
and anyone with an interest in the field will find this volume both
readable and applicable to daily practice.
Nicholas Sadovnikoff, MD
Department of Anesthesiology
Perioperative and Pain Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Harvard Medical School
Boston, MA
©2001 by the International Anesthesia Research Society