Ferri's Clinical Advisor: Instant Diagonosis and Treatment 2001

Ferri's Clinical Advisor is an ambitious attempt to provide a "one-stop" general reference text for primary care. The primary editor has an excellent reputation for medical texts and has assembled a broad array of authors, ranging from fellows to experts in their clinical fields. Though a commendable effort that tackles a lot of information, the text is somewhat unwieldy, and spotty in its informational content. The 2001 edition is a large text covering over 1000 clinical topics and is available in both text and CD-ROM format. The text is accompanied by patient education handouts, which are indexed to a select set of text topics. In comparison to previous editions, the 2001 version includes more clinical topics, an improved table of contents, and ICD-9-CM codes. The text is arranged into 5 sections: specific disorders, symptom and/or sign-based differential diagnoses, clinical algorithms, laboratory test interpretation, and preventive health guidelines.