Gastrointestinal Emergencies

Abstract

By their natures, medical emergencies must be managed where they occur, and often the advices originating from large medical centers offer a problem, namely, recommendations for techniques and equipment unavailable where 95% of the medicine in the United States is practiced. No such problem is found in this volume. This series of papers, presented at the 34th Hahnemann Symposium, offers a gratifying amount of good bedside and community hospital advice. Particularly useful are the following articles: Samitz's "Skin Clues to Diagnosis of Gastrointestinal Bleeding" (although the illustrations are terrible); a brief down-to-earth "Care of the Child With Gastrointestinal Bleeding" by Gibbons; "Plain Films and Barium Studies in Ischemic Bowel Disease" by Schwartz and Burrell (with excellent illustrations); Tumen's, "Clinical Aspects and Medical Treatment of Toxic Megacolon in Ulcerative Colitis" (he has a way of writing classics); and one of the best clinical discussions of acute pancreatitis of recent times by