Continuing Care

Chronic disease is an increasingly important component of medical care. The hospital outpatient clinic is an expensive and often inappropriate environment in which to supervise such problems, whereas general practice is becoming better equipped to provide effective care of many long-term diseases. For this new edition all chapters have been thoroughly updated and revised and there are a number of new chapters and contributors. In the first part of the book the chapter on "the size and nature of the problem" posed by chronic diseases has been rewritten. The chapter on organizational aspects of care has also been redrafted and expanded, reflecting the growing evidence that many of the deficits in supervising long-term problems are administrative rather than clinical. A new chapter on occupational medicine has been added. The second part examines a number of important individual diseases with new chapters on chest, heart and neurological problems. This book demonstrates what is possible in good general practice in the 1990s.