Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology [ハードカバー]

IOACHIM'S LYMPH NODE PATHOLOGY Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology

By Harry L. Ioachim, M.D. and L. Jeffrey Medeiros, M.D.

This is the 4th Edition of Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology that was published a few weeks before the WHO Classification of Tumours of Haematopoietic and Lymphoid Tissues, 4th Edition. Thus, an immediate question is why do we need another book if the "bible" of hematopathology has just been published? While the WHO book spans all areas of hematopathology, including lymph node, bone marrow and soft tissues, Ioachim's book is dedicated to lymph node pathology only. However, the WHO book deals only with neoplastic hematopathology, while Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology covers both neoplastic and non-neoplastic pathology, i.e., everything a practicing pathologist or clinician may encounter in a lymph node, with the additional advantage of detailed discussions on differential diagnosis and valuable historical perspective.

The WHO book is acknowledged as the "standard" of diagnostic hematopathology and it is authored by many leaders in the field, and its approach to classification of neoplastic diseases is considered up-to-date, reflecting the current understanding of pathogenesis and mechanisms of disease, and the book is used as a reference in clinical research. A major limitation is that the book is brief, appearing almost like an abridged version, and explanations or references to the knowledge it presents may not be self explanatory, and at times can appear as dogmatic, despite the inclusion of up-to-date references. Similarly, because of space constraints (I believe), the pictures are in general diminutive, the quality although good, it is not uniform, and details are not fully appreciated.

Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology is a beautifully done, comprehensive and an authoritative text that provides valuable discussions about the context of lymph node diseases, historical perspective where is needed, such as in the chapters on angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma, anaplastic large cell lymphoma, and histiocytic tumors, where previous versions and nomenclature are numerous, and much change has occurred in their understanding and classification in the last few years. Pictures of high quality are profuse and illustrations with detailed descriptions enhance the text. For example, I compared the number of pages and pictures dedicated to the chapter on angioimmunoblastic T cell lymphoma and found that the WHO book dedicated 3 pages and 12 (rather small) figures, while Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology used 13 pages and 28 (detailed) pictures. Similar to the WHO book, Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology has been extensively revised and for comparable chapters, the updated bibliographic references are essentially the same, as is the conceptual approach including the use of cutting edge technology such as gene profiling and comparative genomic hybridization. A hallmark of Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology is the comprehensive inclusion of chapters on non-neoplastic disorders, including infections, immune and metabolic processes, as well as erudite discussions on chapters dedicated to metastatic neoplasms in lymph nodes. An additional advantage is that Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology is full of valuable references and discussions of features encountered in the daily practice, not only related with histopathology, but with clinical, laboratory and other ancillary techniques currently used in clinical practice.

What I consider a significant drawback may be more a conceptual than a true deficiency. I would expect that a book of lymph node pathology would be synonymous with all lymphomas. However, several "lymphomas" are not covered, such as the extranodal lymphomas (with exception of the salivary gland), skin lymphomas (although mycosis fungoides is included), and a few others. This "deficiency" I believe is rather conceptual, since many lymphomas do not arise in lymph nodes and are mainly or purely extranodal. Another apparent, but not real deficiency, is that Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology uses as reference for certain discussions the 2001 WHO (3rd Edition) book rather than the 4th edition. However, as I mentioned, Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology goes beyond the 2001 WHO book and is updated equivalent to the WHO 4th Edition, so that the knowledge is essentially the same in both books. I found the index excessive and somewhat disorganized, with some entries redundant; for example breast carcinoma is under entries such as axillary lymph node, metastasis, adenocarcinoma, carcinoma, ductal, mucinous carcinoma, and metastatic breast carcinoma, metastatic breast lobular carcinoma. Other entries are not relevant; for example, "cervical" and "axillary lymph nodes" have many entries, and "collagen fibers" links to a collagen deposition in a case of sarcoidosis (page 205, Fig 38.7).

In summary, the book authored by Harry L. Ioachim and L. Jeffrey Medeiros covers the entire spectrum of neoplastic and non-neoplastic pathology that can be found affecting lymph nodes. The book is fully updated and enhanced by systematic discussions on differential diagnosis and prolific, high quality illustrations for each chapter. I believe that Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology, 4th Edition is truly a classic of lymph node pathology, and has a value equal, but complimentary to the 2008 WHO book. I highly recommend Ioachim's Lymph Node Pathology to practicing pathologists, hematopathologists, pathologists-in-training, clinicians, oncologists and scientists.

This hard cover text book is an excellent resource for the practicing pathologist. The online text was great until January, 2011, when Lippincott took down what was an excellent, fast and efficient, online resource and replaced it with a miserably restricted version, which seems like a limited version of Amazon's "Click to Look Inside" function. The online reference text now displays just page by page. It can no longer be scrolled or printed. It can be searched, but its rudimentary search function merely returns a list (10 entries at a time) of every page on which the word appears, along with a 5-6 word sentence fragment for context (no chapter or section title). From that minimal information, I cannot figure out which is the pertinent entry for my query. It's faster for me to get up, get the printed text book off the library shelf, and look it up there.

In my opinion, the book covers quite good the entities one can find in a lymph node; very good description in short and easy way, with all the main details highlighted in the end of each chapter. The pictures are of a good quality.