In her book, Dr. Valeria Torres Cater presents a comprehensive academic treatment of adult patient care organized around the major disciplines, diagnostic problems, and clinical situations encountered in internal medicine. The work begins with foundational approaches to patient assessment, history taking, physical examination, diagnostic synthesis, differential diagnosis, interpretation of medical data, laboratory investigation, imaging, evidence appraisal, prevention, and health promotion.
The subsequent sections examine major areas of adult disease, including cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal and hepatic, renal, endocrine and metabolic, hematologic and oncologic, infectious, rheumatologic, neurologic, and general medical conditions. The organization allows individual diseases to be considered within their broader physiological and pathological relationships rather than as isolated entities.
Particular attention is given to situations in which diagnosis and management depend on the integration of findings from more than one source. The text addresses acute presentations such as altered mental status, syncope, chest pain, dyspnea, abdominal pain, fever, shock, and critical illness, followed by a dedicated section on diagnostic challenges, multiple abnormal findings, cross-system assessment, and the progression from a clinical problem to a working diagnosis.
The final section provides reference material covering laboratory values, electrolyte and acid-base information, clinical calculations, medical terminology, scoring systems, and commonly encountered drug classes. In this structure, the book treats adult medicine as an interconnected field in which history, examination, investigation, pathophysiology, diagnostic probability, and reassessment contribute to the formation of a coherent clinical assessment.
