Interventional Pulmonology

Rating:
Summary: A Unique Manual of Demanded Methods
Review: This book is the only fundamental manual dedicated to a specific theme: minor invasive endoscopic treatment of tracheobronchial lesions of various kinds. The importance of intraluminal endoscopic surgery grows during the recent years together with the general shift of surgery towards minimization of invasiveness. Nevertheless, modern medical literature still lacks prominent manuals and guidelines in interventional tracheobronchology, and both thoracic surgeons and pulmonologists have to seek for information mainly in periodical publications. Being a general thoracic surgeon who faced the necessity of learning interventional intraorganic endoscopic techniques, I myself had to limit my studying to training under guidance of prominent specialists and brief journal articles, so this book appeared to be of major value first of all for my practical work.

A historical review of therapeutic endoscopy in major airway lesions is of undoubted interest and presents the impression of fundamental authors' approach from the very first pages.

The first division of the book, "Therapeutic Bronchoscopy", covers all the interventional techniques having been used so far for intraluminal surgery of major airways, including mechanical methods, high-frequency electric surgery, high-power laser surgery, cryosurgery, brachytherapy, and all kinds of airway stenting. Such a wide range of thorough review, at the best of my knowledge, hasn't yet been performed in any other manual.

Each chapter, after a detailed review of various kinds of techniques to use this or that method, is completed by a "How I Do It" section where the authors present a very descriptive characteristic of their own preferred "know-how"; this truly practical approach is hard to be overestimated, especially for less experienced specialists.

The chapters describing general techniques of flexible and rigid bronchoscopy, indications, contraindications, and principles of choice between one and another in certain clinical situations, as well as technical maintenance of endoscopic equipment, might be of particular value for novices.