Microbes Savant™

Naturally, the system suffers all of the omissions of ICD-9. For example, "AIDS" and "ARC" were not recognized, nor was "Acquired" exactly right for AIDS, because that gave me "acquired immunodeficiency-279.3." Not to worry, however; the program has a nice feature that lets you add diagnoses to the dictionary, so I added AIDS and ARC to the dictionary with fictitious codes, and they were immediately accessible. This feature enables you to update your system to keep it current and access the diagnoses as you write them, as well as the way the authors of the classification wrote them. Overall, I was impressed with the system, and I think an hour or so to become maximally comfortable with this system is not a high price to pay for the convenience it could provide for someone who had to do this work frequently. I would recommend more adequate descriptive material-not to tell you how to get started-because that is clear and the menu quite adequate-but to give you a few user's hints initially to speed up the learning process. I also wish that the authors would have included in the dictionary more codes to save the user from trying to outguess ICD-9 and the codes for surgical operations and medical procedures. Nevertheless, the flexibility of the program, and its great ease of use, make it an excellent buy for the money and a real timesaver for the person who looks up many of these diagnostic codes. One disk for IBM and compatibles. $39.00. Microbes savant® is a menu-driven program that is, we are told in the letter from the publisher, "An application that affords quick selection of appropriate anti-microbial drugs." Our copy required an IBM-compatible computer, but the minimum RAM needed to run the program was not indicated. It is a quick and easy program to enter and use. The user first chooses the class oforganism to be treated (e.g., gram-positive cocci, gram-negative bacilli, protozoa, and so on). The next level requires choosing the specific microorganisms. Then the program shows a big box with all of the primary antibiotics listed in what at first appears to be alphabetic order, but then the alphabetic order is often repeated. It is not clear whether or not each alphabetic cycle implies that, as in Consumer Reports, those of equal usefulness are listed alphabetically, and the next alphabetic list includes those of lesser usefulness. More instructions …