Geriatric Emergency Medicine

Abstract

The editors of this unique tome have assembled a plenitude of knowledgeable contributors who, in 53 chapters, competently cover a neglected but consequential field of geriatric medicine. Unfortunately, inaugural publications often contain omissions, oversights, and errors, and this book is no exception, although such errors do not detract from its clinical utility. One of the notable deficiencies of this book is a paucity of references for statements that clearly require substantiation. During a discourse on drug therapy in chapter 5, the author devotes three paragraphs to the discussion of a five-year multicenter trial on the use of diltiazem in postinfarction patients, but fails to reveal a source for the data; comparable omissions occur at least three times in the same chapter. A similar circumstance occurs in chapter 7, in which text presented in table format implies that age-related loss of brain weight contributes to dementia. Lamentably, such a contention lacks