Book Review: Electrotherapy: Evidence-Based Practice (12Th Edition)

Abstract

Tim Watson. Published by Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh 2008 £41.99 978-0-443-10179-3 Edward B Clayton’s Electrotherapy and actinotherapy was first published by Bailliere, Tindall and Cox in 1949, an amalgamation of Electrotherapy with the direct and low frequency currents (1944) and Actinotherapy and diathermy for the student (1939). It still bore the title Clayton’s electrotherapy in its 10th edition, edited by Sheila Kitchen and Sarah Bazin (Saunders, 1996). In the meantime, though, the fashionable catchphrases “evidence-based” and “evidence-based medicine” had been introduced (in 1990 and 1996, respectively), and the book’s next incarnation was revamped to its current title, with Kitchen as sole editor. The current edition has again been edited single-handedly, by Tim Watson, Professor of Physiotherapy at the University of Hertfordshire, and was published in 2008 by Elsevier under the Churchill Livingstone imprint. Associated material can be accessed (and downloaded) by purchasers at http://evolve.elsevier.com/productPages/s_1451.html (accessed 12 May 2009). Further useful information is available at Watson’s own website, Electrotherapy on the web , at http://www.electrotherapy.org/ (accessed 12 May 2009). Watson’s emphasis throughout, as shown in his own thorough and well constructed contributions to this volume, is on evidence-based practice as an integration of “individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research” (p vii). Not all his co-contributors have been so careful, however, and there is still room for improvement if the book’s contents are to conform consistently with its title. The book contains 21 chapters in five section: (1) Introduction and scientific concepts (8 chapters); (2) Thermal and non-thermal modalities (4 chapters); (3) Electrical stimulation modalities (7 chapters); (4) Ultrasound imaging (1 chapter); and (5) Contraindications, dangers and precautions (1 chapter, “Guidance for the clinical use of electrophysical agents”, published in 2006 by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists). Comparison with my battered and much read copy of the 10th edition (I have not seen the 11th) gives …