Today more and more physicians are either performing endoscopies or referring their patients for endoscopic procedures. Thus, there is an increasing need for good textbooks that describe and illustrate endoscopic findings.
Dr Blackstone has produced a very comprehensive text on the endoscopic appearance of the gastrointestinal tract. The numerous color illustrations are of good to exceptional quality, and each one is carefully described. Normal findings are compared and contrasted with pathologic states that range from the uncommon to the most unusual, as well as those created by surgical interventions.
The author does not just catalogue the findings, he discusses their significance, frequency, and clinical relevance based on the literature and on the extensive experience of physicians at the endoscopy laboratory of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Thus, this text also represents a new reference source for endoscopic findings in a large group of patients seen at a