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Hepatology: A Textbook of Liver Disease

2002; Elsevier BV; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0168-8278(02)00383-5

1600-0641

Oliver James,

Genetic and Kidney Cyst Diseases

I ordered my advanced copy of Zakim and Boyer last November and was delighted when it eventually arrived two or three months ago. I am sorry to say to the distinguished editor of the Journal of Hepatology, who is also the editor of an excellent textbook of liver disease, but Zakim and Boyer has for the last ten or fifteen years been the large textbook of liver diseases by which others must be judged. What about this new fourth edition? Since I received it I have put it to the test. I often find myself turning from my desk to refer to a major textbook. These referrals fall into two groups: firstly, if I come across a condition about which I don't know very much (often reading something means that one can appear authoritative and knowledgeable in front of the Fellows and interns as well as ones colleagues); and secondly, if I want an authoritative review of a major problem. So I have looked up angiosarcoma of liver, which was disappointingly brief, and not well referenced, and also juvenile haemochromatosis, which was referred to in a table but was not mentioned in the index; nor, despite a careful search, could I find any account of this interesting condition in the text. Turning to more frequently encountered conditions, the accounts of the autoimmune liver diseases are uniformly excellent, but it is disappointing that the whole area of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease/NASH occupies only one and a half pages, with only six lines given to pathogenesis, and receives only seventeen references. The first edition of Zakim and Boyer was published twenty years ago. Obviously in any major multi-author textbook the passage of time leads to changes of authorship (the grim reaper, or merely retirement), but less obviously a number of contributors change their interests. There are several chapters in this new fourth edition written by individuals who are no longer active in the fields about which they have written. This has led to one or two areas being covered in a slightly wooden and not very exciting or up to date way. The editors should have been tougher in reassigning some topics. Overall, now, Zakim and Boyer is not perhaps, for me, any longer the real standout that the second and third editions were. Perhaps two thirds is still really excellent, very well written and superbly referenced, but one can no longer rely completely on an authoritative account of all aspects of pathophysiology and clinical practice in liver disease in the way one did five or ten years ago. It has been argued that the use of the internet, with its many search engines, has rendered large textbooks obsolescent. I disagree. I strongly believe that there is still a place for both first rate, up to date, overview accounts, of which the paradigm is still Sherlock and Dooley (eleventh edition published this year), and also for fuller major textbooks giving up to date, fully referenced, accounts of pathophysiology and disease. I very much hope that there will be a fifth edition of Zakim and Boyer, but they will have to exercise even greater editorial discrimination to bring back this superb textbook to its former position at the top of the hepatology pile.