Diaspora Medicine

A textbook of medicine focussing on disease presentation in general and in black Africans in particular. There are 22 chapters divided into three sections with more than 2000 references cited. The first section gives a description of detailed clinical history and general and systematic physical examination and formation of diagnostic hypotheses and their differentiation. The book provides a flow chart algorithm and logic of making the right diagnoses. This first section is followed by general and systematic pathophysiology of diseases that are cosmopolitan or global with literature citations. There is deliberate focus on ethnic variation in disease presentation and differences in normal values especially among Black Africans where such information is not widely known or available. These differences or patterns in black’s or other ethnic non western peoples are backed with literature citations as in evidence based medicine. The third section describes the core principles of clinical pharmacology such as routes of drug administration, receptor pharmacology, pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism, pharmacogenetics, adverse drug reactions,interactions, and poisoning. Other important topics such as effects of age, pregnancy or food on drug action are also covered. The latter half of the 3rd section focuses on clinical therapeutics and randomized control studies of certain diseases such as hypertensive crises, acute myocardial infarction, peptic ulcer disease , thrombolysis, antiplatelet drugs and anticoagulants and basic cancer chemotherapy, antibiotics and anti tuberculous therapy. This book has found popularity and utility among medical students and residents, attending physicians in the west who want an update on particular problems which are uncommon in the west or exclusive to black immigrants. Those preparing for the USMLE steps, nurses, physical therapists and pharmacists find different aspects especially tailored to their needs.