With demographic trends shifting toward an aging society, Merck and Co. decided in 1990 to broaden its popular Merck Manual series by focusing on elderly care in a separate version, The Merck Manual of Geriatrics. The second edition, published in 1995, is now available free of charge on the company Web site. Organized by disease states associated with each organ system, this clinical resource provides considerations in the diagnosis and treatment of conditions that commonly affect the elderly. Additional sections are devoted to psychosocial, payer, ethical, legal, and other miscellaneous aspects of geriatric care. The user, however, will benefit during subsequent visits by inserting a bookmark on the Table of Contents page, which serves as a launch site to the 114 chapters.
Hyperlinks allow the user to easily jump to related topics found in other chapters.
Just as this resource was originally designed as a book, so must it be approached as a book. Little if any modification was done to the copy, which makes for lengthy, undivided pages of only text. For the user performing a search within this resource, the results will include hits from the entire Merck domain, not just those for The Manual of Geriatrics itself. Because the current edition was published four years ago, it does not include the many recent advancements in pharmacotherapy. Therefore, alternative sources should be consulted for today s prevailing practices.