Book Reviews

Better late than never, the long-awaited second edition of the BSAVA Manual of Small Animal Ophthalmology has finally reached the shelves. This is a great book, and has been well worth the wait. The previously existing chapters have been thoroughly updated, and three additional chapters have been added (Ophthalmic surgery and anaesthesia, Ophthalmic drugs, and Rabbits). Colour images have been used extensively throughout the text, and these add a great deal to the publication.

The book is divided into 17 chapters (some subdivided) and three appendices. The chapters are as follows: Examination and diagnostic procedures(ophthalmic examination, ocular imaging, laboratory investigation of ophthalmic disease); Ophthalmic surgery and anaesthesia (anaesthesia and analgesia, ophthalmic surgery instrumentation, and ophthalmic surgery basic principles); Ophthalmic drugs; Theorbit and globe; The eyelids and nictitating membrane; The Lacrimal system; The conjunctiva; The cornea; The sclera, episclera and corneal limbus; The uveal tract; Glaucoma; The lens; The vitreous; The fundus (the canine fundus, the felinefundus); Neuro-ophthalmology; Rabbits; and Exoticspecies.

The appendices are as follows: Differential diagnosis (canine ‘wet’ eye, acute canine red eye, the painful eye in dogs and cats, the opaque eye, sudden loss of vision, slowly progressive vision loss, and congenital and early-onset poor vision/blindness); Ophthalmological emergencies and referrals; and Eye schemes and hereditary eye disease.

On the whole the book is superb. The chapters are short and easy to read, with good up-to-date references to original and review articles. When relevant, they begin with a short paragraph or two on basic embryology, anatomy, and physiology, before expanding into clinical ophthalmology. This is a nice approach, allowing those practitioners with an interest in ophthalmology to gain a basic grounding in the discipline, whilst those looking for a mid-consult ‘quick fix’ can skip the basic science and go straight for the pictures and clinical text.

However, there are some negative points. Onoccasion the image quality could be better. This appears to be an ‘at source’ error rather than a fault of the printers—compare the superb clarity of the photographs within the Glaucoma chapter to some of the poor contrast and out-of-focus shots within the Exotics section. I only found two typographical errors and one of them is really irritating—the consistent misspelling of Chlamydophila felis, chapter after chapter, throughout the entire book. This is a simple publisher error, but I fear it will be responsible for a generation of misspelling ophthalmologists!

Other criticisms: I would have liked to have seen more on guinea pigs, and in fact the whole Exotics chapter did not do a lot for me—the author seemed content to refer to previous review articles of his own rather than cite the original work, and I have already mentioned the relatively poor image quality in this section. However, these criticisms are all relatively minor, and do not distract from the book in any great way. In general, the chapters are well written, nicely illustrated and up-to-date.

In summary, this is an excellent book, clear and easy to read, and illustrated throughout with photographs that aid clinical diagnosis. All practitioners should own a copy. Just remember, it is not Chlamydiophila!!