Treatments for aortic diseases have undergone explosive advances in the last decade. So too has our understanding of aortic disease processes. This progress in understanding and available treatments has come with the cost of increasing complexity. Roberto Chiesa and Germano Melissano have edited a unique jewel of a book which deals with the many complexities of these advances in the pathogenesis of aortic diseases, their endovascular and open treatments and the management of treatment complications.

Although nasal cytology is still a little used diagnostic approach, it has often proved to be decisive: it makes it possible to distinguish between different forms of rhinopathy – inflammatory from infectious, allergic from non-allergic vasomotor, and bacterial from viral and fungal forms, as well as to diagnose the presence, in the same patient, of various “overlapping” forms. It is also important to consider other important aspects that make cytology a practical diagnostic method, accessible to all rhinoallergology services: the simplicity and low invasiveness of the technique. This book fills a gap given that, to date, there have been no textbooks or atlases dealing with this specific topic.

In recent years, musculoskeletal ultrasound (MSUS) has achieved an important role not only in clinical applications (for diagnosis and management of various musculoskeletal disorders), but also in research, due to its several advantages (being convenient, inexpensive, non-invasive, repeatable, providing high-resolution dynamic and comparative imaging, and not requiring any exposure to radiation). 

Growing investments in healthcare do not necessarily produce corresponding improvements in the perceived health of their recipients, whether individual patients or society as a whole. Sometimes, even the opposite is true: growing investments in healthcare lead to lower benefits perceived by patients. How to quantify the health regained by patients? How to measure what for does it really matter to them when physical health is not fully recoverable? How to help physicians and administrators identify the correct objectives and improvements? What scientific instruments can estimate the prospect of patients and society in allocating limited resources? The development of the Patient Reported Outcome Measurements (PROMs) helps answer many of these challenges.

This gem of a book on aortic dissection brings together all the superstars in the field as authors and is edited by two of them, Germano Melissano and Roberto Chiesa. The volume contains the most thorough and up-to-date information on this disease entity and its treatment. It also includes two chapters that provide perspectives of patients suffering from this serious disease, which is so often unrecognized and poorly treated. Accordingly, this text is a “must-have” for all specialists and generalists interested in the challenging disease process of aortic dissections.