ISBN0323018130

I find Egan's very useful, especially in detailing all the physiopathologic mechanisms lying under mechanical ventilation.
Good are also the chapters on respiratory infections, and on respiratory pharmacology.
I only would have expected a chapter on TB, which lacks at all, but maybe this wuould have required extended explanations and the Authors preferred putting it apart.
Very good anyway !

I don't know why so many people rate this book so highly.

We had to buy it when we were RT students, but it was not that helpful. It is a reference for people who already understand the concepts. As a textbook for learning, it is really bad. The way it is written, you wonder of the writer has a pulse. It is so dry, with no attempt to make the reader understand the concepts behind the voluminous information. Without comprehension, you are sure to quickly forget the dry data presented. It was not used much by our class, yet every one of us was required to have this massive book in our backpack, in addition to many others books. This is a heavy book. A single Egan's that stayed in the classroom and that was available to the students would have been enough.

You want the greatest respiratory care textbook ever written? Get Clinical Practice in Respiratory Care by James B. Fink and Gerald E. Hunt. Gerald Hunt was one of the respiratory care teachers at Butte College, in Oroville, CA, where I graduated from. Unfortunately he left just before I entered the program, but his knowledge was legendary. After he left he finished this textbook. I read his textbook, cover to cover, a few years after I graduated. Wow. I wish we had this book when I was a student. When I am king, this will be the main textbook in all respiratory care programs.

You must have it and keep it forever, it has diseases, pharmacology, equipment, procedures, everything!

Egan's has always had a lot of information in it on respiratory care, but it's very hard to understand for someone just coming into the respiratory field. When I can't find something somewhere else, I go to Egan's. The only problem is that I have to translate it into normal English before I fully understand.

If you were to add a chapter on anything that may be perceived as missing, you will turn this already massive chunk of wood into something the size of a CPU. I already hate lugging it around. The only way to improve on the size is to split the material into sections sell it as a similarly priced hard or soft cover set. Then we can add the chapter on TB, sure. Knowing my instructors they'd all be coming to class every day anyways. My only complaint is the weight.

The content is direct, concise, not overly boring, understandable even when this was new and after a couple of years, I'm glad I have the reference still. The order and organization is not what I would have chosen. I knew people who cut the thing up in sections and carried chapters/sections around in report folders... It is BIG. But it is the best. The only other basic reference/text on the subject out there that even compares is Kacmarek's Essentials, it's smaller... LOL. Kacmarek is actually co-writer of the new 2008 Egans.

I would definitely be interested in any new publications by these authors solely on manifestation/process of respiratory disease. That has potential!

Thanks for reading my review!