Clinical Concepts of Infectious Diseases.

This volume is an update and expanded sequel to the first edition, published in 1972.It tries to offer a "perspective of the approaches important for thinking about problems in infectious diseases and caring for patients".In keeping with this objective, this book is not a "cookbook" dealing with all the eventualities of the field of clinical infectious disease.The editors have devoted the first eight chapters to basic host defences, microbial virulence factors, and the interaction of the two that leads to clinically apparent disease.A new chapter on clinical epidemiology clarifies this approach to disease states for the nonepidemiologist.The ensuing six chapters deal with the signs and symptoms by which various infectious agents may be suspected clinically, including acute and prolonged fever, septic shock, and the dermatologic and hematologic manifestations of infection.A review of the many factors that influence the rate of recovery from infection raises useful points for evaluation of patients' response to therapy.Thirteen chapters detail selected problems in clinical infectious diseases, which include viral respiratory infections, infectious mononucleosis, acute and chronic pulmonary infections, urinary tract infections, hepatitis, meningitis and endocarditis.New to this volume are chapters