Nitam Shetty, Tarun Sharma, Mahesh Shanmugam, Muna Bhende, Lekha Gopal, Preetam Samant and Lingam Gopal

2004, Taylor and Francis, London and New York. 331pp ISBN 1-84184-450-0 £60

This atlas of fluorescein angiography has been written by the staff of the Sankara Nethralaya, Chennai, India, which ranks as one of the leading ophthalmic institutions in Asia. Having visited it on more than one occasion for postgraduate examinations, I can confirm the volume and wide range of clinical material that is referred to them, and the excellent facilities and expertise that are present.

This book is not intended to be a retinal textbook but is an Atlas of retinal disorders illustrated with superb clinical photographs. The book is divided into seven sections, and subdivided into relevant chapters. The first section is an introduction to fluorescein angiography, while the remaining six sections are based on different clinical groupings.

Each chapter is well laid out and very easy to read, with a mixture of fluorescein angiograms and colour fundus photographs, of a uniformly high standard. There is a minimum amount of text, but there are useful descriptions of the clinical and angiographic features, and at the end of each chapter ‘clinical nuggets’ and selected bibliography. At the end of the clinical sections is a glossary of useful fluorescein angiography terms. One criticism is the absence of an index does make it difficult to refer to specific conditions without leafing through each section, but this is a minor problem with an otherwise excellent book.

Overall it is a very well-illustrated atlas of fluorescein angiography which provides an excellent introduction to the interpretation of a wide range of fundus disorders. It is not intended to be a comprehensive textbook on retinal diseases, so that postgraduate students would need to supplement their reading to gain knowledge about the diseases illustrated and the scientific basis of fluorescein angiography. However, it would be a valuable addition to the library of most ophthalmic departments and of interest to budding ophthalmologists, ophthalmic nurses, and medical photographers, not to mention the interested medical students.