The book, Pain Management: A Problem-Based Learning Approach, aims to provide a comprehensive review of pain medicine with topics covering chronic, acute, and cancer pain. The target audience is those who are preparing for the oral board examinations in the United States and general medical practitioners who would find the contents useful both for their daily practice as well as professional examinations. The editor is the director and chief of a university pain fellowship program and, therefore, knows the audience’s needs well. Most of the authors come from the United States and are working in fields related to pain medicine and neuroscience, although the roles of some of them at their parent organizations/institutes are unclear. Each chapter begins with several key questions with subsequent answers to describe a number of typical conditions and their management. This also helps in understanding individual management plans. It is followed by a discussion section with more detailed information about these topics. Five questions about the topics contained in the chapter, also with answers, are then given at the end of each chapter. Extra questions can be found in the online version and, presumably, this format will allow the authors to update them should new information become available. In general, all the authors give a comprehensive review of the topics chosen. The writing is good and the messages delivered are clear. Most of the topics relate to specific chronic pain conditions. However, there are a few acute and cancer pain topics mixed in that are quite general but important. Better classification of the topics into acute, chronic, and cancer pain could help to improve the layout of the topics. Some of the pain topics are too general, such as chronic shoulder pain and chronic knee pain, and this makes the presentation and discussion of individual pain conditions difficult. Coverage of neuropathic pain is too broad and overlaps with the chapter on Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. The contents of some chapters do not actually match with the topics. The chapter on Epidural Blood Patch, in fact, is about postdural puncture headache, while Back Pain: It’s not Always Arthritis is about tumor-related pain. The titles of the chapters could, therefore, be more specific so that the audience could refer to them more easily. Another major concern is inconsistency in format and contents, which makes the coverage of individual chapters different. This may be an issue of having multiple authors. There are variations in the questions asked at the beginning of different chapters and some of them are too long. For the discussion, sections of introduction, anatomy/pathophysiology, diagnosis (history, physical examination, and investigations), treatment/management, and conclusion are presented in sequence. Nevertheless, different authors use different subtitles and have different focus on the areas of discussion. Most of the authors discuss the pathophysiology in detail but not the assessment and the management. Some discuss the pharmacological management and/or interventional pain management more, but some discuss individual sections in detail while they present other parts briefly. Some of the authors just modified tables from previously published articles that are not even the most recent ones and not their own work. A multidisciplinary approach to care and cognitive behavioral therapy is very important in pain management but is only mentioned occasionally and not stressed enough in most chapters. It would be good if the level of evidence and a flow chart for management could have been provided at the end of each chapter. Compared with other pain medicine textbooks, this makes intelligent use of the question and answer format to challenge the reader to think along the lines of planning and management of individual pain conditions. Although there is some inconsistency in format and contents of individual chapters, which is difficult to avoid in a multiauthor textbook, most of the authors do review the topics comprehensively. This book can serve as an excellent quick reference for individual pain conditions and, therefore, we recommend it as such. Chi Wai Cheung, MBBS (HK), MD (HKU), FHKCA, FHKAM (Anaesthesiology), Dip Pain Mgt (HKCA)Michael Garnet Irwin, MB ChB, MD, FRCA, FCAI, FANZCA, FHKAMDepartment of AnaesthesiologyUniversity of Hong KongK424, Queen Mary HospitalPokfulam, Hong Kong[email protected]