Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy: A Point-of-Care Guide is a pocket-sized volume intended to help in the provision of care at the bedside and to serve as a quick reference for various cardiac disease states. The book is directed specifically to pharmacists, with a focus on evidence-based pharmacotherapy, with contributions from well-established pharmacists who have published previously in the field of cardiology. The book provides a comprehensive summary of all commonly encountered disease states in cardiology. Acute care topics such as acute decompensated heart failure and acute coronary syndromes are covered, as well as ward-based topics such as arrhythmias, chronic stable angina, dyslipidemia, and hypertension. As such, this book will have broad appeal to a wide range of clinical pharmacists.
The book is divided into 18 chapters and 3 appendices, all of which provide relevant point-of-care drug information. Each chapter includes an introduction and sections on pathophysiology, clinical presentation, and diagnosis as background for the reader. The strength of this book is its succinct and clinically focused sections on pharmacotherapy and its tabular summaries. Much of the pharmacotherapy section of each chapter is based on the latest guidelines of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association, and the pharmacotherapy recommendations are ranked according to the strength of the evidence. Landmark trials that have affected clinical practice are mentioned throughout. Each chapter finishes with a section discussing current clinical controversies, which is a practical feature for clinical pharmacists. Each chapter is well referenced, and resource lists are available through the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists website (www.ashp.org/cardiovascular; click on “Bonus content”). Each chapter nicely encapsulates all of the latest cardiology guidelines in an easy-to-read and visually appealing format. Tables are abundant, which helps with readability, and each chapter is long enough to provide a comprehensive review without the onerous feeling of a textbook chapter.
This book is aimed at practising pharmacists and may cover topics beyond the skills of undergraduate pharmacy students. Pharmacists practising in cardiology would find this book helpful as a quick reference, whereas noncardiology pharmacists would find it useful for updates on the latest practices and trends in cardiac pharmacotherapy. This book was designed to be used at the point of care, and its content and format make it easy to use at the bedside. Given that few cardiology reference books specifically for pharmacists are available, this book would be a valuable addition to any practising pharmacist’s reference library.