Basic Ophthalmology (2016)

Basic Ophthalmology: Essentials for Medical Students (2016) is an excellent book about the diagnosis and treatment of eye disorders.

The book provides a coherent and organized approach to ocular disorders. Namely:

• The Eye Examination
• Acute Vision Loss
• Chronic Vision Loss
• The Red Eye
• Ocular and Orbital Injuries
• Amblyopia and Strabismus
• Neuro-Ophthalmology
• Eyelid, Orbital, and Lacrimal Disesaes
• Ocular Manifestation of Systemic Disease
• Drugs and the Eye

The book provides a fairly good integration of anatomy and pathophysiology. Take facial nerve palsy (“Bell palsy”) as an example. One thing that many learners have trouble with is this: if the disease is characterized by an inability to close the eye, why does the eye often have a droopy and closed appearance?

The answer (page 196) is that patients with facial nerve palsy have two eye-related problems. The first is weakness of the orbicularis oculi muscle resulting in an inability to close the eye, while the second is weakness of the frontalis muscle which causes the brow to droop (brow ptosis) and therefore the illusion of an inability to open the eye! (An additional cause of ptosis in patients with Bell’s Palsy is aberrant facial nerve regeneration).

Basic Ophthalmology: Essentials for Medical Students (2016) is, in fact, ideal for medical students. However, the title undersells the book by a fairly wide margin. The book is of sufficient depth and breadth to be of use to residents and attendings in a variety of primary care specialities including family medicine, internal medicine and emergency medicine. I recommend it very highly.

Participation question

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