Pediatric Therapy, ed 4.

Basically, there are two approaches to writing a book on therapy. One might be to adopt a "cookbook" style in the "what's good for E coli" tradition; the other would relate therapy to such factors as physiology, disease processes, comparative effectiveness, risk, and cost, thus leading to more individualized treatment of a patient and his complaint. The second approach is obviously superior, since many factors should enter into the selection of therapy; what may be appropriate for one patient might not provide optimal care for another. The physician may be faced by several different approaches which, all things being equal, might prove equally effective yet the physician, parent, or patient might find one more acceptable and therefore more efficacious than the other. "Individualization" requires more thought and effort on the part of the physician, or the author of a book; it involves an entirely different level of sophistication than the