Physician-informed medical book reviews and clinical education resources.
Clinician’s Guide to Laboratory Medicine: Pocket (2009) by Samir P. Desai MD is an excellent handbook about the use laboratory studies in clinical medicine. Almost every laboratory abnormality contains an extensive differential diagnosis, along with an intelligent and efficient approach to further workup and diagnosis. It contains dozens of useful charts, algorithms and tables. The hematology and … Read more
My overall favorable impression of the 2013 EMRA Antibiotic Guide is similar to that of the 2011 edition, about which I wrote: For almost any infectious disease, the text advises you about which antibiotic to use, along with the appropriate dose, route, frequency and duration. In addition, the text provides you with various alternatives and contingency antibiotic … Read more
Differential Diagnosis of Infectious Diseases (1996) by David Schlossberg MD is one of those rare let-me-try-to-tell-you-in-350-pages-or-less-everything-I’ve-ever-learned-in-a-lifetime-of-clinical-practice types of medical books. Unlike most microbiology and infectious diseases books, which are organized on the basis of bugs or diseases, Differential Diagnosis is arranged on the basis of specific clinical problems or chief complaints (fever, pneumonitis, diarrhea, rash, arthritis or … Read more
The task of the medical image reader is, ultimately, to recognize images, that is to compare the image on a screen to one that is already etched into theradiologist’s consciousness. As the author notes: “‘Burned’ into the neurons of a radiologists brain are mental images of what a normal frontal chest radiograph looks like, what thoracic sarcoidosis … Read more
I’ve been reading and annotating this book for close to a month now, and I barely scratched the surface in terms of absorbing the enormous amount of useful information stuffed into this relatively small 500 page handbook. Aids to Radiological Differential Diagnosis (2009), edited by Stephen G. Davies, is an extremely helpful handbook for interpreting … Read more
There are very few medical books in existence about which one can be tempted to declare, “I doubt whether in my lifetime there will ever be another book about this topic that is as good as this one.” In fact, I know only one medical book about which a statements like this might be said … Read more