Clinically Integrated Histology

Reviewer: Alvin Telser, PhD(Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine)
Description: This is a very brief textbook of histology which includes several clinical/pathophysiological cases in each chapter.
Purpose: The book is intended to serve as an adjunct for those medical schools which may have revised their basic science curricula to include problem solving based components and an approach to more independent student study. While this is a worthy objective, the author merely touches on these objectives since most of the curricular changes are quite idiosyncratic — each school is "doing its own thing" — and it is likely this book will not be a good fit into another school's curriculum.
Audience: According to the author, this book is written for first year medical students, and I agree. The author is a well recognized authority in the broad topic of medical histology.
Features: There are numerous high quality light and electron micrographs, but some of the line drawings are not as well reproduced, particularly those from other sources. References are not critical for this text; those that are included are fine. The appearance, table of contents, and index are also good. The specific content of this book is rather unique for a basic histology text, but it is acceptable as an abbreviated standard histology textbook. For proper use as a teaching aid, it needs to be used in conjunction with a more complete standard histology textbook, as the author indicates.
Assessment: This book is an interesting effort to serve the possible needs of revised medical school curricula. I found some significant difficulties with this approach. For instance, each chapter starts with a brief case description or two and some gross and histopathological material, and relevant normal histology material follows in an abbreviated form followed by a series of paragraphs discussing the cases. This approach is likely to divert student focus from learning the normal to the more "medically relevant" abnormal too soon in their careers as medical students. Since most teachers of histology are not physicians, an initial disease-based approach to histology may not be appreciated. If such an approach happens to suit the needs of a specific curriculum, this is fine. If not, the book has little to recommend it. If it were to be used, each student would have to own her/his own copy.

Alvin Telser

This is a very brief textbook of histology which includes several clinical/pathophysiological cases in each chapter. The book is intended to serve as an adjunct for those medical schools which may have revised their basic science curricula to include problem solving based components and an approach to more independent student study. While this is a worthy objective, the author merely touches on these objectives since most of the curricular changes are quite idiosyncratic -- each school is ""doing its own thing"" -- and it is likely this book will not be a good fit into another school's curriculum. According to the author, this book is written for first year medical students, and I agree. The author is a well recognized authority in the broad topic of medical histology. There are numerous high quality light and electron micrographs, but some of the line drawings are not as well reproduced, particularly those from other sources. References are not critical for this text; those that are included are fine. The appearance, table of contents, and index are also good. The specific content of this book is rather unique for a basic histology text, but it is acceptable as an abbreviated standard histology textbook. For proper use as a teaching aid, it needs to be used in conjunction with a more complete standard histology textbook, as the author indicates. This book is an interesting effort to serve the possible needs of revised medical school curricula. I found some significant difficulties with this approach. For instance, each chapter starts with a brief case description or two and some gross and histopathological material, and relevant normal histology material follows in an abbreviated formfollowed by a series of paragraphs discussing the cases. This approach is likely to divert student focus from learning the normal to the more ""medically relevant"" abnormal too soon in their careers as medical students. Since most teachers of histology are not physicians, an initial disease-based approach to histology may not be appreciated. If such an approach happens to suit the needs of a specific curriculum, this is fine. If not, the book has little to recommend it. If it were to be used, each student would have to own her/his own copy.

3 Stars from Doody