Book review on “Forensic Pathology Reviews (Book Series, Vol. 1)” by M. Tsokos

Excerpt

This new book series intends to provide up-to-date knowledge on special topics in the field of forensic pathology. This intention—beyond any doubt—is to be appreciated. This new concept is reflected by two corresponding papers with a special emphasis on neuropathology of drug abuse (A. Büttner and S. Weis, Munich, Germany) as well as the systematic review on sudden cardiac death (V. Fineschi and C. Pomara, Foggia, Italy). The paper on drug abuse encompasses a reference list of 550 state-of-the-art entries. The review not only provides a very good synopsis of the pathomorphology, supported by characteristic figures, but it also gives information on the pathophysiological process, which needs to be discussed as the cause for the neuropathological changes. The paper on sudden cardiac death offers a brief summary of the methods of assessing morphological changes of the heart, with the results predominantly complemented by figures, which are apparently, at least in part, derived from slides/power point presentations. These figures are extremely small in size and, thus, do not convey the desired information. The remaining 13 papers do not—or only marginally—meet the intentions of the editor. There are papers that repeat well-known, already published knowledge, papers dealing with primary problems in clinical pathology, and papers with forensic case reports. …