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Book & New Media Review |
Cleveland, Ohio
This product is a huge, vast, enormous, massive, gigantic anesthesia electronic resource, all on one slender CD-ROM. Contained within are seven full-length textbooks, 30 min of video, an easy-to-use search engine working across all seven textbooks, self-test material, and a simulation education tool (BreathSim Lite).
Let’s start with the textbooks. Included is: 1) Cousins and Bridenbaugh, Neural Blockade in Clinical Anesthesia and Management of Pain, Third Edition; 2) Stoelting, Pharmacology and Physiology in Anesthetic Practice, Third Edition; 3) Yao and Artusio’s Anesthesiology: Problem-Oriented Patient Management, Fourth Edition; 4) Barash, Cullen, and Stoelting, Clinical Anesthesia, Fourth Edition; and 5) Handbook of Clinical Anesthesia, Fourth Edition; 6) Connelly and Silverman, Review of Clinical Anesthesia, Third Edition; and 7) Humes, Kelley’s Textbook of Internal Medicine, Fourth Edition.
On entering the main menu, access to the individual textbooks is uncomplicated, and users are able to move among different chapters and textbooks with ease. Although it is quite possible to read these texts from a computer screen as one would read a paper book, most users will want to use this resource as a quick but comprehensive reference they can search for detailed information. Fortunately, the included search engine is very much up to the task. Users can enter keywords or Boolean expressions ("and", "or", "not" and parentheses) for searches. When the sought information is found, users can easily copy and paste the material into a Word document or elsewhere for later review. Users can also add their own notes to the text, as well as add bookmarks and print out selections from the material.
Connelly and Silverman’s Review of Clinical Anesthesia is different from the other included products. It is an interactive quiz designed to assist in preparation for board certification or recertification. I personally found this to be the most useful educational tool offered, as I particularly enjoy this learning format. Between this and Yao and Artusio’s Anesthesiology, over 1000 questions and answers are provided, most with links to further material.
The video material (28 clips, 259 MB) offers segments concerning regional anesthesia, airway management and transesophageal echocardiography.
I had little difficulty installing the software on a Windows 95 test platform. Although the product also works on Macintosh computers, I did not test this. Using the product was easy; I found the controls to be intuitive and straightforward to use. The only problem I encountered was getting the video segments to work (installation of QuickTime is required). There were also some minor glitches in formatting, such as errors in spacing.
As a test of Lippincott’s customer service, I called the toll-free technical support number for the product. I was promptly met with a friendly and knowledgeable woman who quickly answered all my questions.
In summary, The Lippincott Interactive Anesthesia Library on CD-ROM is the definitive electronic resource in anesthesiology. I recommend it without hesitation. My only suggestion is that the next edition be made available in DVD format. This way, there could be even more video and simulation materials, and perhaps even space for a small surgery textbook as well.
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