Churchill's Pocketbook of Differential Diagnosis

The best way to evaluate a new book is to use it. So for the past two weeks I have carried this little text around with me in my white coat, leafing through it while waiting for a clinic to start or to help me write patient portfolios.

This 500 page text centres around signs and symptoms that patients present with to us as health professionals. There is no chapter on cardiac failure, though there are numerous references to it via the associated signs and symptoms that patients exhibit - for example, leg swelling, oedema, dyspnoea, hepatomegaly, weight gain, and so on. This might put you off at first glance, but when clerking a patient who is having trouble breathing, it is useful to have a quick look to see how many of the 23 listed causes you can exclude in the history and in your examination. In addition to