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This concise monograph fills a large gap on the pediatrician's bookshelf. Its pages document the rich clinical experience of Drs Daniel Alagille and Michelle Odievre in conjunction with several collaborators from the pediatric liver research unit at the Hôpital de Bicêtre, Université Paris Sud. The chapters are not individually authored, and the overall quality is assured by multidisciplinary teamwork. The translation from the
French by Micheline Ste-Marie of the Pediatric Gastroenterology Unit at Laval University, Quebec, reads remarkably well. However, an occasional awkward word or phase provides more syllables than most Americans would care to pronounce, for example, "syndromatic" vs "nonsyndromatic" versions of a cholestatic disorder initially described by Alagille in 1949. In "nonsyndromatic" patients with isolated cholestasis secondary to paucity of interlobular bile ducts, hepatic disease is severe and may follow prenatal or postnatal infection. Patients with the autosomal dominant, "syndromatic" form have characteristic facies, cardiovascular malformation, vertebral arch