This book provides an insight into important ophthalmological techniques, which is helpful in view of greater professional teamwork. It stresses when ophthalmoscopy needs supplementation, while indicating when approaches such as angiography could be unnecessary.
The dedication is to the late Professor Klaus Heimann, vitreoretinal expert in Cologne. Thirteen contributors present a highly informative and superbly illustrated text, essentially based on fluorescein angiography. It deals with inherited and many other retinal disorders, including tumours and vascular conditions.
The initial chapter is a concise, balanced, 17-page account of methods of examination, including autofluorescence of RPE lipofuscin. Four pages of comparisons of imaging techniques are particularly arresting; readers should not overlook the valuable short account of adverse effects, immediately following. There is an extended and detailed section on age-related macular conditions, ranging from neovascularisation, with therapeutic aspects, to tears in RPE. Each reader should consider the extent to which the definitions and classes of AMD match personal ideas.
Relatively rare conditions are included, thus note the drug effects in section 4.7, how autofluorescence aids differentiation (5.1) and how progression of retinal capillary angioma is followed using fluorescein angiography.
Section 9.1 shows toxoplasmosis. Section 6 deals extensively with diabetic states, with the next section addressing ischemia and occlusions. In section 8, ICSC and allied serous conditions are shown using fluorescein and indocyanine methods. Retinal radiation damage ends section 8, with optical coherence tomography compared to ophthalmoscopic views.
There are features of differential diagnosis for optic disc level event in 10.1, 10.2, and 10.4, with varied and interesting approaches to medullated fibres, optic nerve pits, drusen and papilloedema.
Atlas of Fundus Angiography, Heimann, H, Kellner, U and Foerster, M H (Eds) (2006). ISBN 3-13-140551-1 pp181, 638 illustrations, €100.00
Professor Robert Fletcher is emeritus professor of optometry at City University