Читать книгу Clinical Guide to Fish Medicine - Группа авторов - Страница 9

Preface

This is an exciting time to practice fish medicine as the field is growing rapidly, techniques and standards are evolving, and information exchange is easy and fast. Veterinary medicine for public aquariums, pet fish, aquaculture, fisheries, and research are converging as never before, allowing better care across the disciplines. Increased focus on fish welfare and sustainability is helping to refine the care of individuals and populations.

Leigh and I talked for many years about a fish medicine textbook for the busy clinical veterinarian in practice; a book that could serve as a practical reference for those starting out or already active in the field. Companion animal species have textbooks formatted to provide clinically relevant information that is easy to access during a hectic day. Why not something similar for fish vets? Eventually, we moved from talking about it to making it a reality. This is the result.

This text provides practical clinical information to help veterinarians, biologists, technicians, and students manage cases and situations effectively and efficiently. We want to help people quickly understand the information they need to consider when faced with clinical cases. We have tried to cover important topics across disciplines, with a goal of building an integrated fish health program that can be generalized to different situations. While we feel it is applicable across disciplines, we are sure it speaks most to vets working in public display facilities and pet medicine, as that is what we know best.

We are aware that despite our best intentions, we will have inevitably created an imperfect product: overlooked certain aspects of the field; missed valuable information; and suffered from our own biases. Known limitations include the constant emergence of new literature and a focus on trends in the United States. Despite these limitations, we hope this textbook can still act as a framework for integrating new information, and inspiration for others to identify and address needs as the field continues to grow. We encourage each reader to share their knowledge and shape the future of this field. In fish medicine, you are a lifelong learner.

This book is divided into three sections: A, B, and C. Section A has chapters covering clinically relevant aspects of anatomy, husbandry, and case management. Section B covers presenting problems, grouped by system, with possible differentials and suggestions on how to approach cases. Section C covers common diseases seen in clinical practice and is grouped into noninfectious diseases, viruses, bacteria, fungi and fungal‐like organisms, protozoa, metazoa, myxozoa, and coccidia. Four appendices cover unit conversions, disinfectants, commercial laboratories, and veterinary training programs.

In putting this together, we relied heavily on an amazing group of contributors and reviewers, all of them experts in their field. We are indebted to every one of them. We have done all we can to ensure that the information in this text is accurate and up‐to‐date as of submission. If there are any mistakes in this text, the fault is with Leigh and me, not our contributors or reviewers.

To quote the indomitable Douglas Adams: “In cases of major discrepancy, it's always reality that's got it wrong.”

We hope that you can use this information to improve the care provided to these amazing animals and to enjoy many more fishy cases.