The Bethesda Handbook of Clinical Oncology is a clear, concise, and comprehensive reference book for the busy clinician to use in his or her daily patient encounters. The book has been compiled by clinicians who are working at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Cleveland Clinic, M.D. Anderson, Mayo Clinic as well as scholars from other academic institutions. To limit the size of the book, less space is dedicated to etiology, pathophysiology, and epidemiology and greater emphasis is placed on practical clinical information. For easy accessibility to the pertinent information, long descriptions are avoided, and more tables, pictures, algorithms, and phrases are included.
The Bethesda Handbook of Clinical Oncology is not intended as a substitute for the many excellent oncology reference textbooks available that are essential for a more complete understanding of the pathophysiology and management of complicated oncology patients. We hope that the reader-friendly format with its comprehensive review of the management of each disease with treatment regimens, including dosing and schedule, makes this book unique and useful for oncologists, oncology fellows, residents, students, oncology nurses, and allied health professionals.
The landscape of oncology has changed substantially since we published the first edition of this book more than 16 years ago. For the fifth edition, we have updated all chapters and added two new chapters, “Clinical Genetics” and “Diagnosis-Driven Individualization of Cancer Care.” Since we are publishing a companion Board Review Book The Bethesda Review of Clinical Oncology, in this edition we have eliminated the questions at the end of each chapters.
As always, we have attempted to capture the advances in the field and listened to the feedback from readers to improve this edition. We hope that anyone needing a comprehensive review of oncology will find The Bethesda Handbook of Clinical Oncology to be an indispensable resource.
Jame Abraham and James L. Gulley