Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer Netherlands

Most symposia on chronic inflammatory bowel disease during the last few years have focused on new aspects of aetiology and pathophysiology. However, based on such new aspects, changes in diagnosis and treatment have been developed over the last few years and some others are currently under investigation. This book, the proceedings of Falk Symposium 97, `Clinical Challenges in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases - Diagnosis, Prognosis and Treatment', held in Lugano, Switzerland, 18-19 April 1997, summarizes these changes and new developments, discusses their value and defines further new approaches. The topics include primary diagnosis, definition of different patient groups, special problems of these patients in daily life and very new therapeutic principles. This volume opens new possibilities of diagnosis and treatment of inflammatory bowel disease to physicians and provides stimulation for further development.

There are many separate groups working in gut biology, and they feel that the gut is an excellent model for investigating general problems in differentiation, growth control, stem cell biology, and regeneration and adaptive responses. There is a pressing need to define the objectives of the next 5 to 10 years, and the meeting, Part III of the Gastroenterology Symposia Freiburg 1996 (Falk Symposium No. 94), held in Freiburg, Germany, October 25-26, brought together some of these groups with a view to identifying areas which are not being utilized and need to be exploited, such as transgenic and knockout approaches, retrovirus delivery systems, and model cell/tissue systems. The main themes of the book are gastrointestinal development and differentiation, gut stem cell biology, and the control of gut growth in normal and abnormal situations. Basic research findings are related to clinical situations, and the book will appeal not only to gut cell and molecular biologists, but also to gastroenterologists interested in the potential applications of these subject areas.

Practical Asymptotics is an effective tool for reducing the complexity of large-scale applied-mathematical models arising in engineering, physics, chemistry, and industry, without compromising their accuracy. It exploits the full potential of the dimensionless representation of these models by considering the special nature of the characteristic dimensionless quantities. It can be argued that these dimensionless quantities mostly assume extreme values, particularly for practical parameter settings. Thus, otherwise complicated models can be rendered far less complex and the numerical effort to solve them is greatly reduced. In this book the effectiveness of Practical Asymptotics is demonstrated by fifteen papers devoted to widely differing fields of applied science, such as glass-bottle production, semiconductors, surface-tension-driven flows, microwaving joining, heat generation in foodstuff production, chemical-clock reactions, low-Mach-number flows, to name a few. A strong plea is made for making asymptotics teaching an integral part of any numerics curriculum. Not only will asymptotics reduce the computational effort, it also provides a fuller understanding of the underlying problems.

Despite 50 years of antibiotics, infection remains a major source of both morbidity and mortality. Immunosuppression, either secondary to drugs in transplant recipients or secondary to HIV, has expanded the number of microorganisms that are known to be pathogenic in man. Imaging of infection has a vital role both in the initial diagnosis and in the continuing management of patients with infection or suspected infection. Functional imaging using nuclear medicine techniques has a unique role to play in identifying sites of infection in a wide range of patients with varying clinical conditions. This book, written by a series of experts not just in the fields of nuclear medicine but also infectious disease and radiology, discusses the role of nuclear medicine in three parts: a review of the pathophysiology of infection; a technical description of those nuclear medicine techniques which can be used in imaging infection; an extensive systematic review including thoracic, abdominal and orthopaedic infection as well as a special section on the acutely ill patient, the immunosuppressed patient and the patient with pyrexia of unknown origin. This book will be of interest to all clinicians looking after patients with infection and who need to use imaging techniques. It will also be of use to radiologists and nuclear medicine physicians who will be using these techniques clinically.

In situ remediation techniques have experienced a boom over the last few years, thereby producing a wide range of valuable experiences. Their results have demonstrated that in situ techniques are a mature alternative to conventional remediation techniques. Irrespective of future policy developments, it is impossible to imagine future remediation practice without the use of in situ techniques. The book presents an overview of recent developments in the field of in situ soil remediation. The book is unique in that it is not a compilation of unrelated case studies. A conceptual approach has been chosen; remediation models described in this book are illustrated from a practical point of view. The authors present the Dutch way of treating contaminated land; The Netherlands is renowned for being at the forefront of remediation techniques as a result of the country's progressiveness and experience in this area.

Neuroanesthesia contains the edited presentations of the 42nd Annual Postgraduate Course in Anesthesiology given by the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Utah School of Medicine, February 1997. The chapters reflect recent advances in neurophysiology, pharmacology and monitoring related to the practice of neuroanesthesiology. The sections on central nervous system trauma, intraoperative management, brain protection and postoperative care provide a conceptual framework for current clinical practices. This textbook is the fifteenth in a continuing series documenting the proceedings of the Postgraduate Course of the Department of Anesthesiology of the University of Utah School of Medicine. It reflects, as well as past and future volumes, the rapid and continuing evolution of anesthesia in the last years of the twentieth century.

Breast cancer is not only a burning public issue, but very soon we shall see genetic testing for a woman's predisposition to breast cancer. Many women will be demanding to know their degree of risk and will need counselling to cope with that information. This book is particularly aimed at primary health care professionals, including physicians, medical assistants, nurses and counsellors, who daily deal with questions from women concerned about their risk of developing breast cancer. To answer such questions, this book has combined a guide to identifying women at higher risk to breast cancer, with a balanced review of approaches which aim to reduce that risk. The book provides practical general measures which may reduce risk for women at average risk. For women at clearly increased risk various protective options with different levels of efficacy and acceptability are discussed. Central to the book is the patient-centered view. We need to face reality that it still will take many years before the current clinical trials of preventive measures provide meaningful results. Meanwhile, women who seek to diminish their risk of breast cancer need all the available information. They must be given full responsibility to make an informed decision on their own health care. Reducing Breast Cancer Risk in Women is a practical handbook, technicalities have been deliberately kept to a minimum, making it concise and easy to read.