Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, Third Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)The Mayo Clinic Family Health Book is like having six resource books in one. Information from Mayo is reliable, easy-to-understand and reviewed by some of the most respected physicians in the world.
Part I: Living Well
Part II: Common Conditions and Concerns Through Life's Stages
Part III: Making Sense of Your Symptoms
Part IV: First Aid and Emergency Care
Visual Guide: Anatomy and Common Disorders (color photos and illustrations)
Part V: Diseases and Disorders
Part VI: Tests and Treatments
Glossary and Resources
Index
Each disease mentioned contains information about key signs and symptoms, a basic description of the disease, illustrations, how the disease is diagnosed, potential consequences, information on treatment, and information on prevention.
The comprehensive index in the third edition is easy to use. For example, information on "scoliosis" can be found on pages 235, 603, 774, 980, and 981. (Page 980 features an illustration.)
There is also a complete listing of resources for more information including addresses, phone numbers and Web sites. I particularly like the section on symptoms. You can just look up a symptom such as "back pain" and learn more about conditions that cause back pain. The book then directs you to the page containing detailed information about that condition.
I'm looking forward to what I hope will be the interactive DVD version of the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book in the future.

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Since its initial publication in 1990, Mayo Clinic Family Health Book has become a classic home medical reference, selling more than 1 million copies. Now in its third edition, this completely revised, generously illustrated volume offers the latest in medical knowledge with a strong emphasis on self-care. From prevention to treatment, from infancy to old age, this comprehensive health guide offers reliable, easy-to-understand information in six convenient sections.

Part I: Living Well

Filled with health-promotion strategies, this section details nutrition, fitness, stress management and other practices for healthy living.

Part II: Common Conditions and Concerns Through Life's Stages

Here you'll find explanations of human growth and development, descriptions of health issues common to children and adults, and a discussion of issues related to death and dying.

Part III: Making Sense of Your Symptoms

This all-new section is intended to help you better understand what may be causing certain signs or symptoms that you're experiencing. It includes information on frequent concerns and complaints common to adults, as well as those common to children.

Part IV: First Aid and Emergency Care

Here you'll find guidance on how to respond to situations ranging from simple sprains and cuts to urgent events such as chest pain and choking.

Part V: Diseases and Disorders

The largest section in the book, Part V includes discussions of more than 1,000 diseases and disorders. Here you can find detailed information about specific conditions. Each discussion lists common signs and symptoms, followed by a description of the condition, information on how it's diagnosed and a review of treatment options. Preceding this section are 40 pages of color illustrations to help you better understand human anatomy and common disorders.

Part VI: Tests and Treatments

This section discusses tests commonly used to evaluate individual health and diagnose disease. It also includes a medications guide and information on surgery, various methods to manage pain and complementary and alternative therapies.
--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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The Merck Manual of Medical Information: Home Edition (Merck Manual Home Health Handbook) Review

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(More customer reviews)This reference book is easy to use and understand. When I first leaned of this home edition version of the Merck manual I was hesitant. Over the years many books have been published that are medical in nature, some published by doctors, but the content is watered down or so vague that a layperson doesn't derive much information from it. Some books are actually condescending in attitude, some patronizing. So many books briefly skim symptoms and then caution to call a physician for more information.
Recently my son was diagnosed on the phone by our pediatrician with chicken pox and it was made clear that they did not want to see him for a physical exam. I was given a tiny bit of information by the office staff but was still curious for more information. I spent over an hour surfing the Internet looking for information but found watered down information, repeated many times over on multiple websites, including some written by physicians intended for laypeople to use. I looked at my parenting books written by doctors (one titled "The Portable Pediatrician", no less) and was still lacking any substantial information. When I consulted the Merck Manual home edition, (which I had forgotten I bought recently and had not yet used), I was surprised at the level of information given. There are many details that I had not found elsewhere, such as number of days from exposure to outbreak, how long it takes the pox to change from first appearance to crusted over, about how long the infection lasts, and treatment suggestions. Reasons why some children have a mild outbreak vs. a severe outbreak were even provided, something I had not found anywhere else.
The information here is not dumbed down in that it is not so vague that it is not useful. There is a lot of information here but it is written in a style for the layperson to understand. I appreciated the writing style, which presents information to the non-physician without putting on airs.
Anyone who, like me, prefers to gather information and learn about things rather than making a call or office visit to their doctor to get just one opinion will appreciate owning this book. At about 1500 pages it covers many illnesses and ailments. If you are interested in this book I suggest you buy it so that you have it at your fingertips 24 hours a day, for whatever may arise. I am not suggesting this take the place of a doctor, but I know from working with physicians that there are certain calls that are non-emergent in nature that are not appreciated when the office is closed!
If you are looking for a book about children's ailments that encompasses not only western medicine but lists an array of other treatment methods, I suggest Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child: A Practical A-To-Z Reference to Natural and Conventional Treatments for Infants and Children by Janet Zand. I found this to be an excellent companion to the Merck manual, home edition. The Merck manual gives more information about the disease or ailment itself through a Western medicine viewpoint while the Zand's books' specialty is sharing treatment options grouped by category (herbal, homeopathic, western, etc.).

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Columbia University Department Of Pediatrics Children's Medical Guide Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is a lifesaver, complete with flowcharts of possible problems, descriptions of illnesses, what to do for your child and when to call the doctor. Most helpful of all are the many pictures of what rashes, etc. actually look like. I heartily recommend this for anyone with children.

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Written with the prestigious Columbia University Department of Pediatrics, this is the essential medical reference for households with children everywhere. From diaper rash to high fevers--look it up and know what to do or how to ask your pediatrician for help. Easy-to-use disnostic flow charts are cross-indexed by symptom and diagnosis. Clear instructions are given on what to do in emergencies. Full color.

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The Yeast Connection: A Medical Breakthrough Review

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(More customer reviews)At 29, I suddenly started feeling sick all the time. Doctors tested me for everything under the sun but found nothing. They "diagnosed" me with "Fatigue of unknown origin". By pure chance, I happened upon The Yeast Connection and it explained everything. I followed his diet recomendations and felt better almost immediately. I can't imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't figured out how my diet and lifestyle were making me sick. I have cut out processed food and sugar, and now eat a diet mainly of organic whole vegetables and whole grains and I feel terrific.
If you have intense sugar cravings, get sick a lot, are depressed, or are tired all the time, read this book. If you have been on birth control, taking a lot of antibiotics, or eating a diet high in sugar and processed foods, read this book. If doctors can't figure out what is wrong with you, read this book.
The book isn't that well organized and a lot of information is repetitious. But it's well worth muddling through. The information is priceless.

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An in-depth guide to those health problems in people of all ages and sexes that can be traced to sensitivity to the yeast germ candida albicans.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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The Circle - A Walk with Dementia Review

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(More customer reviews)Sally Smith's personal account provides much needed validation for the myriad of emotions we experience when someone we have loved so deeply and for so long begins to slip away into the hands of this horrible disease. The humor and warmth with which she writes is a valuable gift to anyone struggling with this issue, and with all proceeds going to aid research efforts, it is not only a must read, but a must buy.

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The Circle was published with a vision of helping families and caregivers of aging, mentally frail loved ones cope with the ongoing realizations of dementia. This book is unique in that it addresses the emotional and human side of this disease while most available books concentrate on the dry medical practicalities. Sally Smith, whose inspiring personal account--closing the family home and moving her mother into an assisted living facility--resulted in a book that critics have said is "healing, hilarious and very helpful to those of us sharing similar experiences." The manuscript was given as a gift to the Medical University of South Carolina and published to raise awareness and support for research into Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, dementia, vision and hearing loss and other age-related problems. 100% of the net proceeds will benefit research into these issues.

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Handbook Of Geriatric Care Management Review

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(More customer reviews)the book provides an excellent overview of the field and the business side of case management. It is thorough and well researched.

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Handbook Of Geriatric Care Management, Third Edition Is A Comprehensive Guide For Geriatric Care Managers (Gcms) To Help Define Duties And Procedures While Providing Guidelines For Setting Up A Geriatric Care Practice. An Essential Teaching Tool, This New Edition Is An Easy-To-Use, Practical Guide That Gives Students The Foundation They Need To Receive A Certificate Or Degree In GCM. The Third Edition Has Been Completely Updated With Revised Chapters On Psychosocial Assessment, Functional Assessment, Ethnic And Cultural Assessment, And Writing A Geriatric Assessment. Also Included Throughout The Text For Additional Study Are Sample Forms, Sample Letters, And Case Examples.

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Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide Review

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(More customer reviews)This guide is the only general medical guide you will need for your family. It has great symptom charts, pictures, explanations, information, & instructions for thousands of situations. It is an emergency medical guide, a compilation of articles by medical experts, & an all-round great source of medical information. I love this book! We're buying more for presents.

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The Johns Hopkins Family Health Book: The Essential Home Medical Reference to Help You and Your Family Promote Good Health and Manage Illness Review

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(More customer reviews)This is the best medical book for laymen I have ever read. It has as much or more detail as the Merck Manual in an easier to read format for the patient. It covers prevention, diagnosis and treatment. I recommend it highly.

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The American Medical Association Encyclopedia of Medicine Review

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(More customer reviews)This book needs an update. It's too old, the information is outdated. I tried to locate an updated version but none was found. If you can recommend a more current reference like this I would like to know about it. Thank you.

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The Patient's Guide to Preventing Medical Errors Review

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(More customer reviews)This book squarely tackles the problem of preventable medical errors. For any of the thousands of affected Americans, The Patient's Guide provides comfort that a talented medical professional like Ms Berntsen has devoted her attention and time to reducing the incidence of PMEs.

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A nation watched in horror as 17-year-old Jessica Santillian died needlessly after a heart-lung transplant in 2003. She had been given organs with the wrong blood type. That error killed her. It is just one among tens of thousands of less publicized errors that occur in U.S. hospitals each year. Author Karin Berntsen, a veteran of the hospital and health care industry, takes us through the headlines, and the events never publicized, into hospital wards and surgical rooms to see how errors are made causing disability or death. She gives graphic examples of actual events that illustrate the problems cited in a federal Institute of Medicine report showing medical errors in the hospital cause 44,000 to 98,000 deaths each year. Those errors include medication mistakes, wrong site or side surgery, and botched transfusions. Berntsen explains why these are not just human errors with one or two people responsible; they are systems failures that require a major culture change to remedy. And that change, she argues, may not come without action by the very people the medical system is designed to help: patients. She offers clear actions consumers can take to assure they are not on the receiving end of a medical error. The book details over 200 tips for improving patient safety.



U.S. hospitals have countless stories of miraculous healing and recovery; the greatest technology, most advanced medicines, and best research in the world. On the other hand, we have a system where medical errors bring more than 120 fatalities each day across the country in hospitals. An airline crash causing that many deaths daily would paralyze that industry. But because the deaths and harm are diluted across and deep within the silence of hospitals, it is easier to be complacent. There is, says Berntsen, an urgent need to pause and take inventory, a need for clinicians and consumers to come together as partners for change.

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Modeling in Medical Decision Making: A Bayesian Approach (Statistics in Practice) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a nice readable book about decision theory from the Bayesian perspective. In addition to providing the foundations of Bayesian decision theory including utility theory the author prvides many real world research examples including meta-analyses.
Unlike his more recent and highly statistically sophisticated text on Bayesian decision theory this concentrates on medical examples and his written at a level to appeal to clinicians as well as statisticians. Decision trees and methods toevaluate quality of life years are introduced and used in the examples.

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The Merck Manual Home Health Handbook: Third Home Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)What a great value and so easy to read! I bought the mayo clinic guide and was disappointed with how obtuse the medical explanations were.
I'm no doctor! I just want to know what my kids are sick with!
So I returned it and decided to go with the new Merck Manual.
In addition to a great price, it was actually easy to read. I won't make that mistake twice, that's for sure.
I can't recommend this Health Book enough, especially to parents anxious about their kids health.

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Healing Dramas and Clinical Plots: The Narrative Structure of Experience (Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology) Review

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(More customer reviews)I had polio in 1947. Subsequently, I spent years in physical therapy and medical community services. This is a book clearly written by an author who has very little experience in the area of physical suffering or disability. Yet her clear and precise understanding of what denigrates and also what boosts the morale of patients dealing with severe trauma shines forth. I applaud this effort. The constant push toward compassion found in her book and the call to carefully listen to the stories of individual patients astounds someone like me who grew up in the confines of a rather harsh and unfeeling medical community where listening to the patient was unheard of. This is for me a glorious breakthrough. And yet, the most crucial and pivotal assistance ever imparted in my estimation is a spiritual understanding of how we come to terms with faith in our Maker and God during times of tragedy and loss. Personally, I don't know how anyone survives severe disability apart from the grace and compassion of the Almighty Who can and will enter into our place of suffering and bestow spiritual strength to press on. Learning that God is a very present Help in trouble enables and fosters triumph in times of darkness.

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There is growing interest in "therapeutic narratives" and the relation between narrative and healing. Cheryl Mattingly's ethnography of the practice of occupational therapy in a North American hospital investigates the complex interconnections between narrative and experience in clinical work. Viewing the world of disability as a socially constructed experience, it presents fascinatingly detailed case studies of clinical interactions between occupational therapists and patients, many of them severely injured and disabled, and illustrates the diverse ways in which an ordinary clinical interchange is transformed into a dramatic experience governed by a narrative plot. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including anthropological studies of narrative and ritual, literary theory, phenomenology and hermeneutics, this book develops a narrative theory of social action and experience. While most contemporary theories of narrative presume that narratives impose an artificial coherence upon lived experience, Mattingly argues for a revision of the classic mimetic position. If narrative offers a correspondence to lived experience, she contends, the dominant formal feature which connects the two is not narrative coherence but narrative drama. Moving and sophisticated, this book is an innovative contribution to the study of modern institutions and to anthropological theory.

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Johns Hopkins Symptoms and Remedies: The Complete Home Medical Reference Review

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(More customer reviews)John Hopkins is one of the top Hospitals in the country and they are also a teaching hospital.
A medical reference book prepared by them is one that I feel is reliable as well as easy to read. It gives you information that helps you understand your medical problem but in no way should be used in place of seeing a physician.
It arrived promply and in very good condition. Way to go Amazon!

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The Cornell Illustrated Encyclopedia of Health: The Definitive Home Medical Reference (Weill Cornell Health Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)This Encylopedia is understandable, informative, beautifully written, focused layout making it easy to find your topic of interest, contains rare diseases not easily found for the laymen to purchase in local store i.e. papillademi, and well priced for all the medical research contained. ... An essential book for your family, friends, social, and business associates. The perfect gift for the person you love and want to see stay healthy or become healthier. Instead of unhealthy cookies and cakes to bring your Host and then consumed in minutes, I recommend this "healthy gift of Life", an everlasting colorful book (not costing much more than the baked cookies) and this will really show you CARE about your loved ones more than about your own talents in the kitchen. Think about it.
This Book is written by Cornell-NY Presbyterian Hospital physicians, #1 hospital in the country with the most TOP DOCTORS named by a landslide that any other top hospital. This new report was just published and for the second time this hospital has won this honor and recognized worldwide for it. Forget about larks out there commercializing with their books and TV lectures as they all have many products to "push". What you read in this book is based on world famous Medical PROFESSORS engaged in heavy research and patients. They keep abreast of the newest technology and studies working in the worlds #1 most prestigous hospital/medical university and are medical PROFESSORS in addition to being doctors. They are right there in the hospital in round table meetings with other physicians and in OR and in the classroom...all the time. A big difference from other authors!
Regarding the Library Journal Editorial Review above:
1. First you mention it is a comprehensive encyclopedia and then you state that they covered the subjects more briefly than other books. The fact is that it covers the widest range of topics. Should a reader be interested in that topic, he/she can then read other books devoted just to that particular heading. The whole purpose of this encyclopedia I believe is to introduce the widest range of health topics, to define and describe, illustrate so that the reader is informed and then again can go out and buy a comprehensive book by Cornell doctors regarding Heart Disease specifically if that the case. ..or the reader can call upon the doctors in this book practicing at Cornell Medical Center, part of NY Presbyterian Hospital for medical care and further reading recommendations. How wonderful to have all these topics in one book to educate.
2. Unnecessarily obtuse? I feel the book is very sharp and clean with a one sentence definition in blue. One sentence or the "bottom line" is all that readers have time for when researching unless of course they then decide to buy a book about one subject.
3. You said book written as 12th grade reading level that is high for this type of work. Have not a clue as to what you mean and I feel 12th grade reading level and people with no reading level entitled to books on HEALTH. This book is for everyone whether health care people or nonclinical people and it accomplished that well.
4.First Aid should be in the front? Then it would look like a regular first aid book which it is not. Wait for emergency and then read a book to see what to do? Is that what you would do? I read the first-aid portion already so when I have emergency I will already know what to do because I read it. And because I read it I will also know that first aid listing is in back of book which is just fine. It is a reference and people should read this book so they are prepared when emergency arises and to not wait until you are bitten by a horse to then look for the first aid page to see what to do then. Good that it is "wordy" as you put it to help people understand what to do in emergency procedures as an "overview" BEFORE the emergency occurs and of course during an emergency they can refer to it again just to be sure they treated the injury correctly.
5. I found the photographs to be just right in size and color and for those I wanted to see more vividly, I used a magnify glass so it was perfect and this way more space for everything these doctors/medical professors included. People should always have magnifying glasses in bathroom and kitchen to read expiration dates and first aid clearly. So having magnifying glass around should be no problem for anyone at home or business as business cards often tiny print when reading emails. Just something we all have to live with.
I feel this encyclopedia is EXCELLENT, could not have been better! Besides its shortcomings as you stated, there are NONE.
Respectfully, Barbara T.

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The American Medical Association Family Medical Guide (AMA Family Medical Guide) Review

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(More customer reviews)When a child's temperature zooms at midnight, this is the book you want. Our family has relied on it, time after time, and through every imaginable crisis. I agree with the comment below that the flow charts and graphic arrangement make this an especially user-friendly book: zip-zip-zip through the chart, and you'll have either an accurate diagnosis, or a sense of comfort about what illness you're NOT dealing with. Very authoritative and thorough, but extremely easy to use, as well.

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American College of Physicians Complete Home Medical Guide Review

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(More customer reviews)First let me say that I used to have the classic AMA Encyclopedia of Medicine for years from 1989 edition, and finally the AMA released a newer book, but it is certainly not as good as the first one and not as good as this ACP Med Guide. Just go to any bookstore and open any page and you'll see what I mean.
The AMA hardly has any photos in the text and is not as nearly richly illustrated as the ACP Complete Med Guide.This book is loaded with so many rich full color photos and illustrations, it is mind boggling. I have worked in the medical field for nearly 10 years and I have never seen some of the photos in this book.
Many photos are close up using electron microscopes that capture spectacular images of cells. I had taken anatomy and physiology I and II in college and never saw an image of a nerve entering a muscle fiber.
There's a ton of images of various diseases that show you for example instantly what a suspicious skin mole might look like.
Every major system in the body is covered exhaustively by diagrams not just showing the anatomy but how the system and each organ work together.
There's a first aid section at the end that illustrates CPR etc.
There's links to relevant websites throughout the text.
Just go browse it at any bookstore.. I could not put it down for two hours!
Well done American College of Physicians and DK publishing!

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