Equine Internal Medicine

Rating:
Summary: The best equine medicine book. Not a quick reference.
Review: A great review of equine internal medicine. Easily the best of the books on this subject currently available. The content is well organised and indexed, which makes this text far easier to navigate than Smith's Large Animal Internal Medicine. The content, inevitably, reflects the geographic location of most of the authors (North America).

Although the book contains much data on clinical pathology and drug doses, these are buried in the text. It would have been good to have these in an appendix as can be found in Current Therapy in Equine Medicine 4. This book is thus not suitable as a quick reference. The book would also be helped by a snappy summary at the head of each sub-section.

However, this book accurately reflects current thoughts on equine medicine, and is highly recommended

Rating:
Summary: Excellent in parts, but incomplete
Review: When I first got this book, I thought it was excellent. It is easy to read. The majority of the information is up to date (for 1998) and in depth without losing relevance. The book also by and large avoids the repetition seen in Smith's Large Animal Internal Medicine (2nd Ed) and is well organized.

Like any multi-author book, there are stronger and weaker chapters. The cardiology chapter is excellent, well-laid out and informative. The neonatology chapter is basic, but well presented and good. The section on vestibular disease reads easily and is full of good information. The section on toxicology (which I have always struggled with!) is well laid out, logical, and far easier to read than the equivalent section in Smith. However, the section on HYPP is poorly organized and leaves the reader confused as to the clinical signs and treatment of this important (in the USA) condition. The section on Hypertonic Saline is directly copied from a review in Compendium six or so years previously, to the extent that it still lists papers in press that have long since been published. This and the scanty fluid therapy chapter make disappointing reading. However, on the whole the information in the book is excellent, and I was initially very happy with the book.

However, when I came to study for my ACVIM Large Animal Internal Medicine boards, I realized how incomplete the book is. As one example, there is no information on Equine Motor Neuron Disease in the Neurology Chapter. There are many other omissions which devalue this book as a resource.

I still think this book represents the best information available in textbook form on Equine Internal Medicine. However, I hope the editors will work hard to fill in the gaps for the second edition.