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(Circulation. 1998;98:1041.)
© 1998 American Heart Association, Inc.

Book Reviews

Vascular Disease in the Elderly

W.S. Aronow, E.A. Stemmer, S.E. Wilson, eds. 574 pp. Armonk, NY: FuturaPublishing Co Inc; 1997. $120.00. ISBN 0-87993-646-0.

D. W. Kitzman, MD

Section of Cardiology, Bowman Gray School of Medicine, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC

There are now many texts on heart disease in the elderly. To the best of my knowledge, however, this is the first on vascular disease in the elderly. Vascular disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in older Americans and one that has been largely ignored or treated as an orphan of mainstream cardiology. This deficiency in the specialty of cardiovascular disease is beginning to be addressed by medical specialty boards and training programs. The National Institute on Aging has also recognized the pivotal importance of vascular function and dysfunction in several recent reports regarding recommended research emphases.¹

This multiauthored text is well done. Spanning 571 pages, it is thorough but concise and focused. The editors—Drs Aronow, Stemmer, and Wilson—set high authorship standards with their own invaluable chapter contributions. The introduction by Dr Stemmer is a lucid, concise overview of the fundamental principles of the impact of the aging of our population on health care. It hits all the highlights and is insightful and authoritative. This outstanding contribution by Dr Stemmer, a professor of surgery, is an example of how improvements in care of the elderly are often accomplished by persons of stature in multiple subspecialty areas who develop an interest and passion for aging and care of the elderly. This chapter sets the tone for the entire book.

The chapters in the book are uniformly good with many outstanding original treatments of the topics. For instance, chapter 4, "Vascular Aging," by Dr John Walsh, is meaty and . . . [Full Text of this Article]