The latest issue of Ophthalmology, the fifth edition, authored and re-edited by those doyens of ophthalmology, Drs Myron Yanoff and Jay Duker, is a beautifully written, comprehensive textbook with a clear clinical focus. In one substantial text, it covers the majority of ophthalmic conditions and procedures one may encounter.

The book is divided into 12 parts covering all subspecialties, including optics and refractive surgery. It walks the reader through key and associated features, epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnosis, treatment, course and outcomes. Basic principles, including anatomy, physiology and imaging modalities, are also well covered throughout.

Visually the book is well laid out with consistent formatting between the 12 parts. There are several well defined sections within each part, which allows the reader to dip-in for quick reference or read-on smoothly. There are plentiful, high quality images of conditions and illustrations of core concepts throughout, allowing a relatively easy read despite the substantial text.

To be practical, the book is too large to be easily portable, with a total of 1440 pages and larger than A4 paper size. However, the eBook companion can be viewed on your mobile or laptop and is easily accessible to all book owners through a unique code supplied within each cover. This allows full access via the Expert Consult eBook site. The online version is easy to navigate and enables the reader to perform useful searches, highlight and add notes to text.

An impressive feature of this book is the abundance of high-quality videos it references, which illustrate key clinical findings and demonstrate cases of varying complexity; ranging from standard phacoemulsification to the management of unexpected lenticular subluxation. My only minor reservation about these is the variability in editing, with some with verbal or written narration and some without. Nonetheless, the relevant videos are easy to find in the text as ‘play’ icons with the associated-clip number placed alongside in the book’s margins.

One small improvement to this otherwise excellent textbook might be to have included summary sections, including key clinical studies and their findings, to allow the reader to quickly access up-to-date evidence-based treatment and management.

Overall, the fifth edition of Ophthalmology is an excellent, very comprehensive reference textbook with a strong clinical focus and would be an asset to any ophthalmic library. Indeed, it would serve well as a one-stop reference textbook for any reader in eye care and thus would make an excellent foundation resource for ophthalmic trainees.

Dr Jina Han is a cornea and anterior segment fellow with the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her doctoral thesis (MD) is based on various aspects of cataract surgery and surgical risk.