The author has vast experience in the field of pediatric cardiology and has written this book for use by students, house officers, and practicing physicians who treat children with heart disease. The author expresses the conviction that clinical examination is indispensable to the evaluation of a case of heart disease in a child, a premise with which few would disagree. Unfortunately, the clinical examination presented in this book seems to be primarily limited to auscultation and phonocardiography.
While the detailed description of the physical findings in cardiac lesions discussed is laudable, these findings are overemphasized relative to other clinical tools, such as ECGs, chest films, and echocardiograms.
To present the clinical findings in various kinds of congenital heart disease with no description of the ECG and radiologic findings makes the descriptions of considerably less value than if these data had been included. For example, the chapter on endocardial cushion defect