Preface

CURRENT Medical Diagnosis & Treatment 2025 (CMDT 2025) is the 64th edition of this single-source reference for practitioners of adult medicine in both hospital and ambulatory settings. The book emphasizes the practical features of clinical diagnosis and patient management in all fields of internal medicine and in specialties of interest to primary care practitioners and to subspecialists who provide general care.

With a growing recognition of systemic racism and other biases in institutions across our societies, including the institution of medicine (https://www.mdcalc.com/race), the editors of CMDT, with humility, have committed to a thorough examination of our content to remove biased language, research, and recommendations. Since 2020, we have been pursuing an ongoing, formal process of review and revision in an effort to recognize and correct biases and to promote equity in our book and thus in the practice of medicine. While we, the editors, take this on as our responsibility, we also invite readers to share with us any CMDT content that they find problematic or biased. Please email comments to CMDT@mheducation.com.

We have tried to describe populations used in the studies that form the basis of the information in CMDT and use appropriate language where we can (eg, persons of sub-Sahara African descent, rather than African Americans). We continue, however, to use terms from original sources when study populations are broad.

House officers, medical students, and all other health professions learners will find the descriptions of diagnostic and therapeutic modalities, with citations to the current literature, of everyday usefulness in patient care.

Internists, family physicians, hospitalists, nurse practitioners, physician associates, and all primary care providers of adult medicine will appreciate CMDT as a ready reference and refresher text. Physicians in other specialties, pharmacists, and dentists will find the book a useful basic medical reference text. Nurses, nurse practitioners, and physician associates will welcome the format and scope of the book as a means of quickly referencing medical diagnosis and treatment modalities.

Patients and their family members who seek information about the nature of specific diseases and their diagnosis and treatment may also find this book to be a valuable resource.

The “Year in Review: Key Clinical Updates in CMDT 2025” highlights what the editors consider to be the most significant clinical changes over the last year, providing page numbers and reference citations for easy access. This tool is meant to get users “current” quickly but does not reflect all the changes since the last edition.

• Medical advances up to time of annual publication

• Detailed presentation of internal medicine disciplines, plus key primary care topics

• At-a-glance format, facilitating efficient use in any practice setting

• Coverage of more than 1000 diseases and disorders

• Specific disease prevention information

• Easy access to medication dosages, with trade names indexed and updated in each annual edition

• Recent references, with unique identifiers (PubMed, PMID numbers) for rapid downloading of article abstracts and, in some instances, full-text reference articles

Six e-chapters listed in the Table of Contents can be accessed at www.AccessMedicine.com/CMDT. These online-only chapters (available without the need for subscription) include

• Anti-Infective Chemotherapeutic & Antibiotic Agents

• Diagnostic Testing & Medical Decision-Making

• Information Technology in Patient Care

• Podiatric Disorders

• Women’s Health Issues

• Appendix: Therapeutic Drug Monitoring, Laboratory Reference Intervals, & Commonly Used Blood Specimen Collection Tubes

With this edition of CMDT, we say goodbye to Phil Tiso, our extraordinary Principal Editor at the University of California, San Francisco, and we offer our gratitude for his 22 years of work on CMDT.

Phil received his undergraduate degree from UC San Diego and earned an MFA from UC Riverside. Prior to working at UCSF, he served in the United States Coast Guard, maintaining aids to navigation on the Mississippi River and helping coordinate search and rescue operations in the Puget Sound. He began work with us in 2000 as an editorial assistant to McGraw Hill author and editor Dr. Stephen McPhee with many grants and publications. Phil worked on annual editions of CMDT, from the 2001 through the 2024 edition.

In addition to his responsibilities on CMDT, Phil worked closely with Dr. McPhee on other McGraw Hill textbooks: Pathophysiology of Disease 4th through 8th editions; [Pocket] Guide to Diagnostic Tests 6th and 7th editions; and the McGraw Hill/JAMA Evidence textbook, Care at the Close of Life: Evidence and Experience. In recognition of his extraordinary service to these texts as well as to Dr. McPhee’s grants and manuscripts, Phil was promoted to a Principal Editor at UCSF.

We have admired and appreciated Phil’s enthusiasm, cheerful presence, and reliable calm in the face of mounting pressure as deadlines approached. He kept CMDT on schedule without fail.

Our entire editorial team will greatly miss their daily interactions with Phil. For all of us, he has been a truly special partner!

We wish to thank our authors for participating once again in the annual updating of this important book. We are especially grateful to Bryn A. Boslett, MD, Rachel Bystritsky, MD, Steven Z. Pantilat, MD, Jonathan A. Waitman, MD, and Thomas J. Walsh, MD, who are passing the baton this year. We have all benefited from their clinical wisdom and commitment.

Many students and physicians have contributed useful suggestions to this and previous editions, and we are grateful. We continue to welcome comments and recommendations for future editions via email at CMDT@mheducation.com.