[Books on anesthesiology and resuscitation published in Spain. An approach to their study]

Few authors have examined the publication of medical books. Our aim was to analyze the nature of books published in Spain on anesthesiology and recovery.

Books listed by the Spanish ISBN agency were selected if they included anestesi* or reanima* in any field. Duplicates were removed. Multiple editions or references were considered single books, with data for the oldest edition entered into analysis. Multiple volume collections were grouped as complete works. Data analyzed for each book were year of publication, language (of publication and the original), subject (according to ISBN classification) and place of publication. Nine subject classifications were applied: general, recovery, anesthetic techniques, pharmacology, obstetrics/gynecology, pediatrics, veterinary anesthesia, dental anesthesia and miscellaneous.

We analyzed 216 books. Years that saw publication of the greatest number of books were 1988 (17), 1993 (16) and 1979 (15), and the five-year period in which the most books were published was 1985 to 1989 (48 books, 22.2%). Most books (114, 52.8%) were originally written in English, Spanish being the second most common original language (58, 26.8%). All books were published in Spanish. The Spanish ISBN classification system identified 11 categories: general diseases/clinical medicine/therapy (161, 74.5%); drugs/pharmacology/physical therapy/toxicology (20, 9.3%); gynecology/obstetrics (9, 4.2%), veterinary medicine (9, 4.2%) and medicine (8, 3.7%). Classification by specific subjects showed a predominance of monographs or treatises on general aspects (42, 19.4%) followed by books on recovery (37, 17.1%), anesthetic techniques (25, 11.6%) and pharmacology (17, 7.9%). Most books were published in Barcelona (142, 65.7%), Madrid (36, 16.7%) or Saragossa (10, 4.6%).

Spanish publication of books on anesthesiology and recovery has increased in recent years. Most books are translations usually from English. Spanish ISBN agency data, although it has limitations, can be useful for locating books published in Spain on anesthesiology and recovery. It would be useful to introduce keywords into the ISBN data base so that books on specific subjects could be classified and retrieved.