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''... intended as a manual for physicians diagnosing and treating exogenous and infectious vulvovaginal disorders,... an interdisciplinary approach was essential.'' This text is organized into two sections, vulvar disease and vaginitis, but the editors apparently failed to provide a coherent overview to the contribu- tors. Chapters were written by dermatologists, gynecologists, and infectious disease specialists, but they seem to have been assigned in almost random fashion with regard to expertise. For example, an adequate but brief discussion of erosive lichen planus occurs in the ''Rare Causes of Vaginitis'' chapter, written by a microbiologist (incidentally, the only indexed reference to this disorder). ''Diagnosis and Classification of Inflammatory Vulvar Disease'' was written by a gynecologist, who still uses the outmoded term ''dystrophy'' and devises his own unique classification scheme, ignoring his own table of the latest internationally accepted classification of vulvar disorders. Lichen sclerosus is described as ''an illness...'' resulting ''from hormonal disturbances.''