Travel Medicine, 4th Edition

By Jay S. Keystone, CM, MD, MSc(CTM), FRCPC, Phyllis E. Kozarsky, MD, Bradley A. Connor, MD, Hans D. Nothdurft, MD, Marc Mendelson, MD, PhD and Karin Leder

ISBN: 9780323546966

Pub Date: 13 December 2018

Reviewed by: Winnie  W Ooi, MD, MPH, DMD (Harvard Medical School)

Description

This book focuses on the most important information for practicing travel medicine given the enormous growth of knowledge in this field since the last edition was published in 2013. The chapters are full of excellent tables clearly delineating important elements, including many algorithms describing the approach to specific problems. The website is clear and easy to navigate with good hyperlinks from references to journal articles.

Purpose

The purpose is to provide a review of important topics in travel medicine, while incorporating updates and new information, including new vaccines, new accelerated regimens for established vaccines such as for rabies and Japanese encephalitis, and the increasing role that antimicrobial resistance plays in this field, particularly in the context of traveler’s diarrhea. The online version enhances the print version, as it makes it easy to navigate back and forth between the text and the many tables.

Audience

Written for practitioners of travel medicine, this book also can be used by students and residents. The chapter authors are well-known and well-published experts in their fields and have successfully used both a practical and evidence-based approach to reach their intended audience. This edition also includes authors from South Africa and Australia, giving it a truly global perspective.

Features

The chapters cover comprehensive aspects of pre-travel consultations, vaccines, medical issues related to traveling, such as malaria and travelers’ diarrhea, the approach to post-travel medical problems as well as special needs of different populations, such as older travelers. The chapters are well written, organized, and comprehensible. For example, the malaria chapters cover the epidemiology, chemoprophylaxis, self-treatment, and treatment of patients. They also cover Plasmodium knowlesi and the different approaches to chemoprophylaxis and self-treatment that practitioners in various countries take. Drug interactions between antimalarials and antiretroviral drugs are well covered in the chapter on travelers with HIV. A more complete section on the approach to counseling patients who are going on medical missions in poor resource areas who may themselves be exposed to HIV or other infectious diseases would have been helpful, particularly with regard to post-exposure prophylaxis.

Assessment

This is a much-needed updated edition. It will serve as an excellent resource for travel medicine practitioners, as it incorporates both a practical and evidence-based approach to the practice of travel medicine and is written by experienced global experts in their fields in clear and concise language. This edition also has new material on ecotourism, pre-travel considerations for non-vaccine preventable infections such as Zika, the deployed military, and the VIP traveler.

Doody’s Review Service Weighted Numerical Score: 91- 4 Stars