Book reviews

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 36 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1043-3074
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0347(199909)21:6<583::aid-hed15>3.0.co;2-2

✦ Synopsis

Although many chapters in texts exist on the topic of ear disease, one of the many complaints of my junior residents, medical students, as well as physician assistant and nurse practitioners, is that we lack a text that is written at a level that they can easily understand. The book authored by Dr. Black is intended to fill this void. The book is written in an outline fashion, which is easy to read. It also hits all the basics, which allows this book to be easily understood by those without an extensive background in otology. Some of the best chapters are "Otalgia," "How to Clean an Ear," and "Middle Ear Surgery." A bonus is that Black also discusses facial palsy and the most common vertigo diagnosis. I found that the book has a dichotomy in its illustrations. On the one hand, there are many black and white line drawings of varying usefulness and quality. I question some of the drawings, especially those of the middle ear and eustachian tube. Although they are simple cartoons, some require a little bit more knowledge of otology than the basic reader may have in order to fully comprehend their meaning. However, probably the best feature of this introductory text is the color pictorial essays on the conditions of the ear. These photographs are some of the best that I have seen and would be useful even for the experienced otologist.

One of the other interesting points of this book is that it offers good descriptions on a number of ways of treating ear disease. In fact, I even learned some new tricks that are probably inherently different from the way otology is practiced in Australia versus that of America. For example, the use of a narrow ribbon wick