Asthma and COPD

"...textbooks, such as the one discussed here, are all essential in shaping a necessary way forward to fight chronic respiratory diseases worldwide...At first it was a surprise to see that this impressive textbook covered both asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in one volume. Asthma and COPD: Basic Mechanisms and Clinical Management is edited and written by prominent individuals who have done everything possible in the past to convey the message that asthma and COPD are two different diseases: that they are characterised by different risk factors; have a different pathophysiology; are characterised by clinical phenotypes that are distinctly different; require different therapeutic strategies; and probably pose very different challenges to the health-care system. Yet in this textbook they now provide a truly novel approach towards our understanding and perception of asthma and COPD...the combined approach set out in this book towards asthma and COPD is not so much the Dutch hypothesis revisited, rather it is a more than sensible approach to understanding the nature and the challenges of chronic respiratory diseases in general. Asthma and COPD provides a superb synthesis of the most up-to-date knowledge on obstructive airways diseases by leading experts in the field...The description of basic mechanisms is a particularly strong feature, but the reader also finds excellent chapters on the pathogenic mechanisms of asthma and COPD, a description of risk factors and triggers, and a clinically useful description of the clinical assessment of these frequent conditions...this textbook is a joy to browse through and to read; it is very well illustrated, and the tabulated material is truly educational...I hope that this book will become one of the major reference sources for information on asthma and COPD and that it might have the potential to serve a much wider medical community than respiratory textbooks usually do." --Klaus F. Rabe, The Lancet