The purpose of this book is to provide the pediatric practitioner with an approach to the diagnosis and management of patients suspected of suffering from an infection through the use of teaching case exercises.

These cases have been designed as teaching exercises in clinical infectious diseases. Their sources are as follows:

1. (i) The majority are derived from my own clinical experience. Because this experience covers a period of 30 years, many of these are reconstructed from memory, and therefore some of the details, especially the child's age and sex, may not be accurate.

2. (ii) Three cases are based on reports in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reviews (MMWR).

3. (iii) Several cases are composites of different cases from my experience.

4. (iv) The remainder of the cases are hypothetical, based on current knowledge of the clinical manifestations of a Particular illness. These include cases in which I have constructed a clinical scenario to match a photograph.

Where names of the cases have been used, they are not the patients' real names, but they contain clinically important information.

Although these cases cover a wide range of infections, they do not necessarily include cases of commonly encountered infections. They do, however, include cases of uncommon infections. I make no apology for this because the goal of the exercises is to encourage thought about diagnostic possibilities, both within and outside the range of the usual clinical encounters in the United States.

The first chapter addresses general principles in the diagnosis and management of patients suspected of suffering from an infectious disease.