From The New England Journal of Medicine
Improvements in the surgical and medical care of infants and children with congenital heart disease are one of the most spectacular medical success stories of the past quarter-century. Diseases such as simple D transposition, truncus arteriosus, and critical aortic stenosis are no longer highly efficient killers of infants; now nearly all children with these conditions survive, and the medical focus has shifted from decreasing mortality to improving the status of long-term survivors. Even the lesion most resistant to therapy, the hypoplastic left heart syndrome, has many survivors thanks to recent advances.
Central to these stunning successes is a broad and deep understanding of physiology and anatomy in the living child with congenital heart disease. This area of study defies oversimplification. Dozens of disease categories, each with its own specific subtypes and associations, require different treatment algorithms. Attention to detail yields rich rewards. No book better illustrates these principles than Congenital Heart Disease, edited by Robert Freedom and his colleagues, most of them from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.
Angiography in general (especially these stunning angiograms) is an ideal way to illustrate the principles and specifics of human cardiac anatomy. Each chapter starts with a balanced and concise treatise on the anatomical pathology. The central text is often a clinical discussion of variable quality and focus, but then come the angiograms, and oh, what angiograms these are! Collected over two decades, these are visually striking, clinically relevant, and anatomically instructive. Examples abound of rare but important conditions and could result only from a sustained effort at a large cardiac center.
Freedom is particularly well suited to this task. After anatomical training with Jesse Edwards and Richard Van Praagh, and a close working relationship with Robert Anderson, he largely succeeds in creating an anatomical terminology that fuses the best approaches from each of these schools of cardiac anatomy. Reflecting Dr. Freedom's clinical training by Alexander Nadas and Richard Rowe, the entire book exemplifies attention to detail and common sense.
In many ways, this textbook is likely to represent the apogee of an era. Most of these angiograms were obtained as part of diagnostic cardiac catheterization. By the end of the century, nearly all anatomical diagnoses will be made by echocardiography and the newly emerging technique of magnetic resonance imaging of congenital heart disease. The opportunity to obtain such wonderful angiograms will be largely lost, but thanks to Congenital Heart Disease, the opportunity to learn from these angiograms and to use them to continue to care for children with congenital heart disease will be preserved.
Reviewed by James E. Lock, M.D.
Copyright © 1998 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
Review
"These volumes will remain the benchmark for angiocardiography. The lucid text is supplemented by about 2,700 illustrations, which are extremely well reproduced.
"These volumes are essential in pediatric cardiology libraries...internists cardiologists who manage adults with congenital heart disease should also have this text in their libraries."Clinical Cardiology
"...an open-minded approach to diagnosis of certain lesions, including valuable information that can be obtained from complementary imaging modalities (echocardiography and magnetic resonance imaging)."
Doody’s Review Service
"...likely to represent the apogee of an era."
The New England Journal of Medicine
"This two-volume book is extremely well written and covers this difficult subject extensively.
"...contains an excellent index, table of contents, and glossary of abbreviations used in classification and anatomy of congenital heart disease. Difficult areas such as atrial and visceral situs, d-l loop ventricle, isomerism, and heterotaxia are explained and illustrated well. ...over 2,700 figures.
"...one of the most comprehensive and current books available on angiocardiography of congenital heart disease."
Radiology
"The herculean task of assimilating an encyclopedic compendium of angiograms in congenital heart disease has been successfully undertaken by this group of dedicated and experienced authors.
"The quality of the images is outstanding. Useful illustrations appear throughout the book, as do numerous drawings that provide a touch of humor (you’ll have to review the book to see what I mean). The high-quality pathology illustrations are extremely valuable. The correlation of these illustrations with angiographic images provides unique insight into what the angiographer can expect to find. I also enjoyed the way these authors have put the images in clinical context.
"One of the real highlights is the attention paid to the postoperative imaging appearances of the heart after a myriad of new cardiac surgical procedures. The authors have also done a laudable job dealing with some of the angiographic appearances of postoperative complications. These areas are generally omitted in other standard angiography books.
"No other standard textbooks that are currently available deal with angiocardiography in such great detail; in my mind, few other books can compete.
"As a former pediatric cardiologist I only wish that this book had been available when I was in training and in practice."
--American Journal of Roentgenology
"The great effort put forth by this team of experienced authors is obvious from the quality and scope of this work. ...Without hesitation I recommend that all libraries consider this excellent book as an important reference source on pediatric cardiac angiography and put a copy on their shelves."
--Canadian Journal of Surgery
"This book should be at disposal in all departments where angiocardiography in patients with congenital heart diseases is performed."
--Czech and Slovak Paediatrics
"This superb effort to produce a reference atlas for congenital angiography is beautifully and carefully crafted by highly respected experts in congenital heart disease and cardiovascular radiology.
"This text should be a required reference source for all pediatric cardiology training program libraries. Its comprehensive atlas-like angiographic figures make it a masterpiece that should be available to all practicing pediatric cardiologists."
--Mayo Clinic Proceedings
"Interventional techniques are fully described, as is their role in treatment. For its most recent developments, this text is excellent.
"...a must for anyone performing angiocardiography or anyone involved in the diagnosis of congenital heart disease. It should certainly be a staple of hospital, medical school and departmental libraries in pediatrics and radiology."
--Pediatric Radiology
"Authors succeeded in connecting angiographic findings (that are dominating) with clinical data. The book should be available at all departments performing angiographic examinations in patients with the congenital heart disease."
--Czech Radiology
"This well-referenced book should appeal to all pediatric cardiologists, whether in training or fully trained. It is an essential book for all departmental libraries, institutional libraries, and highly and unreservedly recommended to individual doctors. Given its cost, it is a good value."
--CardioVascular and Interventional Radiology
"...comprehensive...will provide the reader with many hours of reading pleasure. It is also an excellent reference book for both invasive and non-invasive paediatric cardiologists, as well as radiologists involved in cardiovascular assessments. ...a unique and authoritative source of information. The beautiful angiographic images are a work of art. ...cardiac catheterisation and angiography will remain a very important diagnostic and therapeutic modality.
"...worth the investment. The library of any paediatric cardiologist would be incomplete without this reference book."
--European Radiology
"... a heavy emphasis on morphologic descriptions of each anomaly and its many anatomic variations. The natural history of each condition is clearly depicted and all are portrayed extensively by a beautiful compilation of angiocardiography. The great usefulness of the interventional catheter which has developed so much over the past ten years, and its symbiosis with angiocardiography is well described. [The authors] have produced a text on angiocardiographic imaging destined to become a classic."
--from the Foreword by Dr. G.A. Trusler
