Hematology, Immunology, and Infectious Disease: Neonatology Questions and Controversies, 3rd Edition

By Robin K. Ohls, MD; Akhil Maheshwari, MD; Robert D. Christensen, MD; Richard A. Polin, MD

ISBN: 9780323544009

Pub Date: 7 September 2018

Reviewed by: Jay P. Goldsmith, MD (Tulane University School of Medicine)

Description

This is the third edition of a book of well-written reviews on the most challenging issues in neonatal hematology, immunology, and genetics, with a look forward to the practice of neonatology in the next decade. Dr. Robert Christensen has joined Drs. Ohls and Maheshwari as authors. The second edition published in 2012.

Purpose

According to the authors, the book is intended to update neonatal healthcare providers on the most challenging issues in neonatal hematology, immunology, and genetics. This is a worthy objective and is well met by this series of reviews of controversial topics in this area of neonatal medicine, written by known authorities in the field. The online format is easy to access and provides hyperlinks to PubMed for abstracts of the references.

Audience

The intended audience is all neonatal healthcare providers, although some chapters may be too research-oriented for nurses or students. There are excellent reviews of common NICU problems such as strategies for preventing anemia, transfusion thresholds, and the use of donor vs. mother’s own milk, which will be of value to all providers. The authors and most of the contributors are well-known authorities in this field.

Features

The book is a series of 16 standalone review chapters on various topics in this field. Subjects include anemia, transfusions, necrotizing enterocolitis, the genetic basis of several neonatal pathologies, and newborn screening. Each chapter is well written with abundant graphics and tables. The authors have chosen topics that are often the subject of debate on neonatal rounds and this updated, well-researched book will certainly inform those discussions.

Assessment

This is a welcome update. Several new topics have been added and Dr. Christensen brings some new perspective to the project. This is not a complete book on this subject, and caregivers looking for a complete reference in this area will probably need to go to one of the standard neonatal texts (i.e. Fanaroff and Martin’s Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine: Diseases of the Fetus and Infant, 10th edition, Martin et al. (Elsevier, 2015); Avery’s Diseases of the Newborn, 10th edition, Gleason and Juul (Elsevier, 2018)). However, the topics this brief book covers are covered in depth and will inform readers about several controversial areas of neonatal care.

Doody’s Review Service Weighted Numerical Score: 95-4 Stars!