Page 12 - Equine Clinical Medicine, Surgery and Reproduction, 2nd Edition

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
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Following the critical and commercial success of the clinical presentation orientation, which will make it
first edition of this text, which was published in 2011, more user-friendly for the practitioner. The chap-
a decision was made to produce a second edition. ters on the endocrine and nervous systems, plus
The style, format and philosophy of the book was to that on the foal, have been extensively revised and
remain unchanged, but the opportunity was grasped updated to reflect the huge improvement in clini-
to review, update and enhance all the information cal knowledge in these areas. Unfortunately, due to
and illustrations from the first edition. As such, the constraints on the size of the book, the decision was
authors from the first edition, where possible, were made to sacrifice the behavioural problems chapter
approached as to whether they would be interested to allow all the enlargements noted above. This was
in contributing to the second edition. Many took up not taken lightly, as these problems are very impor-
the challenge, others declined, and several unfortu- tant and common.
nately are no longer with us. Alongside reviewing all of the text, all of the
In the majority of chapters, a varying amount of photographs, illustrations and diagrams have been
the information and illustrations is from the first reviewed and, in many cases, replaced by new mate-
edition, and therefore the authors of this material rial. Many of these new images are far superior to
are duly cited. Authors of any new material in the those in the first edition because of the now wide-
second edition are cited separately. In some cases, spread use of digital technology in producing and
there are completely new chapters. The axial skel- recording clinical material. This has been particu-
eton has been split into three new chapters, namely larly evident in radiography and ultrasonography
the neck, the back and the pelvis, to reflect the enor- where the quality of images now obtained is so
mous importance of these anatomical areas in lame- superior to those from 10 to 20 years ago. There are
ness and poor performance veterinary work. There also many more MRI and CT images in this edi-
is a new chapter on muscle diseases to highlight the tion as this technology has become so much more
ever increasing information on this group of prob- common and affordable. The foot, head and den-
lems, which are often not considered by the gen- tistry sections are substantially enhanced by this
eral equine practitioner. The foot chapter has been material.
substantially enlarged to accommodate the large As in the first edition, the intention of this book
amount of new evidence relating particularly to soft- has always been to cover as many different condi-
tissue injuries of this area. The surgical conditions of tions as possible from around the world, and as such
the upper respiratory tract chapter have been modi- the international mix of the authors of the second
fied extensively to take into account new diagnos- edition has been maintained as much as possible.
tic techniques, such as over-ground endoscopy, and Unfortunately, however, my co-editor from the first
new standing treatment techniques. Similarly, the edition, Dr Scott Weese, was unable to continue
upper gastrointestinal tract chapter, and especially with this edition after the initial discussions, but I
the dentistry material, has been extensively revised. personally thank him for that help.
The liver chapter has been completely rewritten, Finally, the intention of this textbook remains
by one of the world’s leading experts, from a more exactly the same as in the last edition, namely, to