Paul Glare - Böcker

This well-written text is designed to help students and health professionals understand oncology through real-life clinical scenarios, helping treatment and management decisions. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this practical case-based format is fun to use and imparts a sense of reality to the learning process. The first chapter presents clinically relevant data from molecular biology, statistics and trial analysis, and Quality of Life research with an emphasis on what practising clinicians should know, but might have difficulty finding elsewhere in a digestible form. The second chapter, Making Management Decisions in Oncology presents the principles which guide decision making in oncology and covers the integration of tumour factors, patient factors and treatment factors into the decision making process. Cancer management requires the skills of a variety of clinicians - surgical oncologists, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, palliative care physicians, oncology nurses and others. The integration of these disciplines into the overall management of each major tumour type has been emphasised in subsequent chapters.

Predicting survival and other outcomes is increasingly being recognized as an important skill for palliative care doctors and nurses, oncologists, and other healthcare professionals who treat patients with advanced cancer. Accurate prognosis is essential if we are to offer quality of care and 'a good death', as well as to aid decision-making. There is much prognostic information available that is scattered throughout the palliative care and oncological literature but this is the first time it has been gathered systematically in one place. Glare and Christakis, leaders in the field of prognosis, bring together a team of international contributors from across the fields of palliative care and oncology. This comprehensive but practical guide begins with the principles of prognostication, including formulating the prediction and then communicating it. Topics such as statistical issues, evidence-based medicine, and the ethics of prognostication are also covered. The second section addresses prognostication in 15 specific cancer sites once they have reached the advanced stage, following a standard template for consistency and easy access to the key information. The third section deals with prognostication in patients with a variety of common clinical conditions at the end of life, such as bowel obstruction, hypercalcaemia, and brain metastases. In addition, survival curves are provided within each chapter, palliative care conditions are examined for the first time, and a summary table of long and short term prognosis ensures this book remains practical.

The 21st is being recognized as the Century of the Person, particularly in Medicine and Health. Person Centered Medicine, as a concept and global programmatic movement developed in collaboration with the World Medical Association, World Health Organization, International Council of Nurses and 30 other institutions over a decade of annual Geneva Conferences, places the whole person as the center of health and as the goal and protagonist of health actions. Seeking the person at the center of medicine, has meant a medicine of the person, for the person, by the person and with the person. Articulating science and humanism, it strives for a medicine informed by evidence, experience and values and aimed at the restoration and promotion of health for all. The textbook on Person Centered Medicine reviews this perspective as it has evolved to date and its resultingknowledge base. The book structure encompasses an Introduction to the field and four sections on Principles, Methods, Specific Health Fields, and Empowerment Perspectives. Its 42 chapters are authored by 105 clinician-scholars from 25 different countries across world regions (North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania). Its vision and goals involve total health for a total person. Ongoing work and upcoming publications would focus on redesigning health systems fit to purpose, and integrating ancestral knowledge and wisdom, community members’ self- and mutual-care, advances in medical science, and the contributions of health-relevant social sectors.