CHAPTER 9

Handbooks and Manuals

KATHERINE SCHILLING

Handbooks and manuals are useful, quick-guide reference sources containing concise, factual data in the basic sciences and information for clinical diagnosis and treatment. Reviewed here are a variety of data books and popular resources for laboratory methods and evidence-based clinical decision making. This chapter organizes handbooks and manuals into four broad categories:

Within each section, titles are listed alphabetically.

Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment

The 5-Minute Clinical Consult 2013 includes 900 medical conditions: their diagnosis, treatment, medications, follow-up, and associated conditions. This edition is evidence-focused, with evidence-based references for most topics. More than ninety-five new topics are included, such as Asherman syndrome, acute diarrhea, pulmonary fibrosis, hand-foot-mouth disease, Q fever, and many others.

Lippincott Williams and Wilkins publishes multiple individual titles in its 5-Minute series, including The 5-Minute Emergency Medicine Consult, The 5-Minute Pediatric Consult, and titles on neurology, nurses’ clinical consult, orthopedics, pain management, pediatrics, veterinary medicine, and others. The full collection is packaged as the Lippincott Williams and Wilkins 5-Minute Clinical Consult Book Collection 2011. The 5-Minute Clinical Consult 2013 comprises the following titles overall:

Full contents of the 2013 edition, including access to twelve 5-Minute titles, are currently available online via STAT!Ref (http://www.statref.com/), from OVID (http://www.ovid.com/), or for mobile devices from the publisher. The edition is also available online and for mobile devices via Unbound Medicine (http://www.unboundmedicine.com/​products/​5-minute_clinical_consult_5mcc).

The American Joint Committee on Cancer’s AJCC Cancer Staging Manual compiles information on cancer staging based on anatomic site. Included is information on the etiology and pathology of cancer. The seventh edition has fifty-seven chapters, many with major revisions, as well as new site chapters for extrahepatic bile ducts, distal bile duct, cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma, Merkel cell carcinoma, and the adrenal gland. Also included is a more comprehensive section on ophthalmologic malignancies.

The Manual includes the principles and rules of TNM staging, including a summary of changes in the TNM classification. Full-color text highlights elements of the TNM, stage groupings, and prognostic factors. “Staging at a Glance” opens each chapter to provide an overview of staging and coding details. Available via STAT!Ref (http://www.statref.com/).

Updated annually, Conn’s Current Therapy is a handbook of diagnostics, therapeutics, and patient care, with descriptions of current therapeutic techniques for managing 300 common diseases and disorders. Disease conditions are referenced by body system. In the later editions, “current diagnosis” and“current therapy” boxes highlight key points in diagnosis and treatment, making for easy browsing. Conn’s Current Therapy also covers herbal products, and recently approved and soon-to-be-approved drugs. The 2013 edition now includes further in-depth topics such as chest pain, pseudomembranous colitis, metabolic conditions, digestive diseases, skin disorders, and more.

Web-based access to the complete 2010 version is available (http://www.connscurrenttherapy.com). Features of Conn’s Current Therapy online include a frequently updated drug database, a variety of clinical algorithms and tables, chapter downloads in PDF format, and an option to download content onto mobile devices. The online chapters are organized by the body systems and particular conditions.

Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment (CMDT) presents signs, symptoms, epidemiology, etiology, and treatment options for more than 1,000 medical diseases and disorders. It is a useful tool for internal medicine clinicians. All primary topics are covered in alphabetical order, including dermatology, geriatrics, gynecology and obstetrics, neurology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, otolaryngology, palliative care, psychiatry, toxicology, and urology. Features include various figures and tables, drug treatment tables, ICD-9 codes, “Essentials of Diagnosis” callouts, and references with (PubMed) PMID numbers.

The fifty-second revised edition of the CMDT includes a variety of updated and new sections, such as a new chapter on women’s health, and revised chapters on viral infections, environmental factors in disease, blood disorders, peripheral artery aneurysms, and others. Also updated are the oncology sections, including breast cancer treatments, cervical cancer screening recommendations, and lung cancer screening protocols.

Well-organized and thorough tables of contents and indexes make this resource easy to browse. The index points users to primary discussions of each topic, tabular material, and figures. Drugs are listed by generic names.

Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment is the flagship of the Current series from Lange Medical Publishers. The series includes these titles:

For more details about the series, see the Lange Medical Publishers website (http://www.langetextbooks.com/). As Lange Medical is an imprint of McGraw-Hill, many of the series titles are available for libraries through McGraw-Hill’s Access Medicine (http://accessmedicine.com/).

The Guide to Clinical Preventive Services includes recommendations on screening, counseling, and preventive medication topics and clinical considerations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that provides systematic reviews of the evidence of effectiveness, and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services. The Guide comprises more than sixty preventive services, which now are presented in an easy-to-use, one-page summary table format. Clinical summaries are abridged versions of the USPSTF recommendations.

In addition, the Guide presents information on resources that clinicians can use to educate their patients on appropriate preventive services, as well as brief descriptions of and links to tools that they can use to improve their practices, including the electronic Preventive Services Selector, MyHealthfinder, and the Guide to Community Preventive Services.

The USPSTF Electronic Preventive Services Selector (ePSS) allows users to download the USPSTF recommendations to mobile devices, receive notifications of updates, and search and browse recommendations online. Users can search the ePSS for recommendations by patient age, sex, and pregnancy status (http://www.epss.ahrq.gov/).

The Harriet Lane Handbook provides pediatric diagnostic, treatment, and management guidance, immunization schedules, procedures, recommended tests, and a comprehensive drug formulary. Features include drug efficacy and safety in children, and FDA Pregnancy Category notations, including the effects of drugs in breast milk. The Handbook also features emergency management protocols.

The nineteenth edition has been significantly reorganized to include an updated pediatric formulary, coverage of dermatology, eczema complications, lead poisoning, CDC immunization schedules, and full-color images to help detect child abuse. This edition is also more compact for easier pocket storage.

The pediatric formulary is continually updated online with dosing and drug information for children (http://www.expertconsult.com/). The Harriet Lane Handbook is available online and for mobile devices. Unbound Medicine (http://www.unboundmedicine.com/​products/​harriet_lane) also carries this title.

The Johns Hopkins ABX Guide 2012 is a pocket-sized handbook on anti-microbial agents, infectious diseases, and common pathogens. It is designed to be a point-of-care, evidence-based, decision support tool for preventing, diagnosing, and treating most infectious diseases. The ABX Guide is organized into four sections: “Anti-infectives,” which includes prescribing information for a variety of drug categories. “Vaccines” provides agents used for immunization and prophylaxis. This section also includes information on diagnostic criteria, indications, administration, and adverse reactions. The “Diagnoses” section features common infectious diseases with diagnostic criteria, common pathogens, treatment regimens, and drug recommendations. “Pathogens” covers clinical information on bacteria, fungi, parasites, and viruses.

Each entry includes clinical relevance, sites of infection, treatment regimens, and general comments and references. The handbook also offers a variety of tables in a rear section and a fold-out chart covering the spectrum of activity for key drugs.

The ABX Guide is available for mobile devices (phone, iPad, Android), online free of charge from Johns Hopkins University (http://www.hopkins-abxguide.org/), or from OVID (http://www.ovid.com/). The guide is also available from Unbound Medicine (http://www.unboundmedicine.com/​products/​johns_hopkins_abx_guide).

The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, first published in 1899, is a widely used medical handbook that gives the essentials of diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions and diseases in internal medicine. The small-format handbook is organized with thumb-tab access to twenty-two major sections organized by body system and medical specialty. More than 2,000 diseases and disorders are covered.

This edition includes fifteen new chapters, 300 new tables, and fifty-six new figures. A new sixteen-page color insert shows skin, eye, and oral disorders. Also new to this edition are sections on geriatric medicine. Appendixes include common drugs and key reference values. An extensive index is available.

The popular Merck Manual series has grown to include the Merck Manual—Home Edition, a lay version of Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy, the Merck Manual of Geriatrics, the Merck Index, a chemical encyclopedia, as well as titles in children’s health, women’s and men’s health, health and aging, and veterinary medicine.

Merck titles are available in print and online (http://www.merckmanuals.com/). The nineteenth edition (2011) is available online from STAT!Ref (http://www.statref.com/). Versions for mobile devices are available with or without an online account from the publishers (http://www.merckmanuals.com/).

The 2009 Merck Manual of Medical Information, Third Home Edition is a comprehensive consumer health version of the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy written in a lay-focused style and format. The online version contains photographs, audio, and video material not found in the print version.

The Merck Manual of Medical Information, Third Home Edition is available online and for mobile devices from Merck (http://www.merckmanuals.com/).

Although not recently updated, Mosby’s Guide to Women’s Health is a useful clinical guide to managing common issues arising in women’s health. Concise and well organized, this guide includes protocols for the diagnosis and treatment of a range of conditions. Traditional medical information is included, as is information on alternative treatments such as physical therapy, chiropractic, naturopathic therapies, nutrition, and herbs. The full 2007 edition is available online via ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com/​science/​book/​9780323046015).

The Nursing Diagnosis Handbook is designed to be used to build customized care plans based on individual patients’ needs. It includes suggested nursing diagnoses for over 1,300 symptoms, diagnoses, procedures, surgical interventions, and clinical sites. The Handbook is organized alphabetically, with evidence-based practice information incorporated throughout. A step-by-step approach assists nurses in identifying a diagnosis and generating a care plan that includes the desired outcomes, interventions, and evidence-based rationales using a three-step process (assess, diagnose, and plan care).

This edition incorporates the 2009–2011 NANDA International (NANDA-I) approved nursing diagnoses, including twenty-one new and eight revised diagnoses. Color-coded boxes illustrate the problem-etiology-symptom format for formulating diagnostic statements. Three types of nursing diagnoses are explained, as are differences between actual and potential problems in performing assessments. A free-of-charge Care Plan Constructor website (http://evolve.elsevier.com/​Ackley/​NDH/) allows nurses to create customized care plans.1

The Pocket Guide is a useful, evidence-based resource that covers tests used in internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery, neurology, and obstetrics and gynecology. The guide is divided into ten sections, including diagnostic testing and medical decision making, point-of-care testing and provider-provided microscopy, common laboratory tests, therapeutic drug monitoring and pharmacogenetic testing, microbiology, diagnostic imaging by body system, electrocardiography and echocardiography, and differential diagnosis tables and algorithms.

New to this edition are more than twenty-four new or revised clinical laboratory test entries, microbiologic tests for new and reemerging pathogens and infectious agents, and more than two dozen new and revised tables and algorithms. A full index is included. Figures, tables, and an easy-to-read format make this a useful resource for students, nurses, and clinicians. The full sixth edition is available online through Access Medicine (http://www.accessmedicine.com/). Web and mobile versions are available through Unbound Medicine as well (http://www.unboundmedicine.com/​products/​pocket_guide_diagnostic_tests).

The Professional Guide to Diseases, in its tenth edition in 2012, mirrors the Merck Manual in coverage and content. This handbook covers more than 600 disorders, including emerging diseases, antibiotic-resistant infections, and terrorist agents. It is organized around disease clusters. Each entry includes a descriptive overview and information on causes, incidence, signs, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and special considerations such as nutrition information, support referrals, or congenital abnormalities. Charts, new full-color illustrations, and anatomic drawings supplement the text. The tenth edition features improved sections focused on health promotion and disease prevention along with color charts and figures illustrating the pathophysiology of many conditions. This edition is now full-color, compared to the mostly black-and-white ninth edition. It is available via OVID (http://www.ovid.com/).

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