Guest Review by W. Greg Upton, DVM (Click on stars for an explanation)

This book is Out of Print.

In the preface of this edition, the authors' stated goals are to create a "practical text with a strong clinical slant that is useful for both practitioners and students." I feel the authors fulfilled that goal.

The text is divided into 13 sections. A respected authority in each field writes each section. The sections are organized by organ systems, or -- when multiple systems are involved -- by discipline. This organizational system seems to work well; finding a particular topic of interest is easy. The book is richly illustrated with hundreds of both color and black and white photographs. If you like diagnostic algorithms, you will find many here. You will also find numerous detailed "how to" instructions for various procedures. Color-coded tables are used frequently to summarize etiology, differential diagnoses, drugs, treatment, and general information. Drug formularies are located at the end of each chapter (I prefer a single drug formulary at the end of the book. This makes a rapid search for a drug dose easier and quicker). I did find one potentially serious error in one of the drug formulary tables. In the table Drugs Used in Hepatobiliary and Exocrine Pancreatic Disorders, the rows apparently shifted during formatting. This results in incorrect dosages when looking up drugs by generic name.

To prepare for this review, I used this book as a first choice reference for two months in a general small animal practice. For the most part, the book fulfilled my reference needs. This text lacks the extensiveness and depth of the Textbook of Veterinary Internal Medicine, 5th ed. (Ettinger/Feldman), but it also comes in a single volume (Am I the only one who invariably picks up the wrong volume when looking up something?). There were times I desired the more in-depth information available of Ettinger's text. In the past, I have heavily relied on Saunders Manual of Small Animal Practice, 2nd ed. (Birchard/Sherding), for a rapid brief source of information on clinical cases. I did not find this Small Animal Internal Medicine quite as friendly to use in the same manner. This book fits in between the two above-mentioned books. It is newer, and therefore more up to date, than the current editions of the other two books.

Overall, I would rate this book as very good. Aside from the error in the drug table, it should provide most practitioners and students with a current reference for the most common medical problems.

Mosby Publishing (2003).

Hardcover, 1362 pages,

ISBN-13: 9780323017244.