Book Review
There is a chauvinism in all of us, suggesting that the best textbooks must come from Europe or North America, most of them with a blue over silver cover. The Indian sub-continent is prolific in its publications in otolaryngology but, in an attempt to keep down costs, we are used to books printed on poor quality paper that disintegrate in your hands, all too often. This is certainly an exception. It is a quality hardback book, filled with excellent illustrations, which is amazing value for money.
This is the 4th Edition of a book that first appeared in 1990. The 2nd Edition was reviewed by Dr Susan Snashall in the JLO and, as a result, achieved worldwide recognition.
Approximately two-thirds of the book deals with audiologic testing. I think it is actually at its best on the simplest routine methods, such as pure tone audiometry, impedance audiometry and ABR. You still read here about the Alternate Binaural Loudness Balance test and the SISI, the sort of thing my generation was brought up on, in the late ‘70’s. This reviewer has experienced current trainees with no understanding of such audiologic phenomena as recruitment or tone decay, as all such testing has become largely obsolete, alas. There is a good chapter on assessing the deaf child and a particularly good one, at the very end, on genetic testing in patients with deafness. There is a family tree here demonstrating autosomal dominant inheritance, where I guessed something had gone wrong with the labelling. An e-mail to the author confirmed this and told a great tale of his mortification and attempt to correct it before printing. If you spot it, then you have learnt the message he is teaching however! It seems to be the sole error that has crept into this text.
There is a briefer coverage of vestibular investigation. It is particularly well illustrated, even if many of these are of what is termed “a butterfly chart”. That may well be familiar to many, but it baffled this reviewer! The newer techniques such as VEMPs are covered in detail but, for once, we are mercifully spared the sometimes dodgy pictures of superior canal dehiscence, that all authors seem obliged to reproduce.
Any UK trainee coming up to the final exam, who had learned even a fraction of what is taught in this book, would have a far sounder knowledge of audio and vestibulometry than is actually required. This book is far better than a US textbook on a similar topic, from an internationally renowned publisher, that I have also reviewed this afternoon and it is far, far cheaper. I was highly impressed.
Liam M Flood FRCS
Middlesbrough UK
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