Abstract
How would you rate this book? (5 star means excellent book useful for all GPs in training—a must have item; 1 star means poor book that you would not buy yourself)
What is good about this book?
The aim of this book is to provide a quick reference guide to interpreting the wealth of data that we as doctors come across in our daily working lives. It focuses on common investigations and tests, providing summaries of how to interpret the results and apply them in the clinical setting. Divided into 16 short chapters, it encompasses the major medical and surgical specialties and is easy to use with bullet point sections, clear headings and a full index that aids in rapid retrieval of information. A specialist has reviewed each chapter, and the book includes two GP registrars and a foundation year doctor among its authors, making it highly relevant to the junior doctor working in either hospitals or the community.
This book is set apart from other texts in its field by an extensive use of clear concise physiological explanations for both diseases and tests in the clinical chapters. This works particularly well in specialties such as neurology and haematology, where the complex is made simple. The section on the neurological examination, for example, includes clear easy-to-access diagrams of dermatomes, reflexes and visual fields, and there is a useful guide for how to approach neurological disorders.
While the section on the interpretation of the full blood count and its abnormalities appears rather dry, it is helpful for focused retrieval of information. Good use has been made of tables of blood results, with abnormal results listed alongside the normal together with explanations of their relevance and suggested causes. The liver function, hepatitis B, thyroid function and bone profile tables are excellent, combining large amounts of often complicated data into clear summaries which are invaluable desk or bedside tools.
The chapter on genetics, which is a frequently neglected knowledge area, is brief but thorough and serves well as an aide-mémoire for patterns of disease inheritance. It also provides useful templates for genetic diagrams, which could be used to aid explanations during consultations with patients.
What is bad about this book?
The book can be over-complicated for such a compact reference guide and seems to lose its way at times, including an excessive amount of physiological theory or background detail. This is evident in the discussion of lung volumes and Gram staining. Keen chemists will recognize the Henderson–Hasselbach equation in the respiratory chapter, but this too seems an unnecessary inclusion of theory that adds little for the reader.
The cardiology section appears dense and difficult to follow and readers may be advised to turn to a more straightforward guide for reminders on this investigation and its interpretation. Similarly, different cancers are discussed briefly in relevant speciality chapters and a separate oncology chapter tries to cover this vast and complicated subject with lengthy specific cancer staging examples, which readers may prefer to explore in other books.
Some diagrams have been included with little accompanying explanation and require further reference to the text, which detracts from the ability of the book to act as a quick reference guide. The ophthalmology section also suffers from having only black and white retinal images.
Finally, the book can at times read like revision notes (from where the authors state that they took inspiration) and there is some unnecessary repetition; the anion gap appears in both the respiratory and the renal chapters, for example, and a description of the histological findings in inflammatory bowel disease is repeated within the same chapter.
In conclusion, this is a book largely written for the medical student or hospital-based junior doctor, and overall, it is a succinct and thorough reference guide. It provides an excellent reminder of background physiology with clear explanations of how this relates to tests and their clinical application. For those doctors in primary care, it is also a useful tool and will be particularly helpful in interpreting those slightly aberrant results that fall into your inbox.