Customer Reviews

Diagnostic Hematology

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This is a very special kind of book. Not the kind of textbook you read if you just want to pass the exam, it is a textbook for becoming a very good, critically thinking physician. It is structured the way problems and patients present themself, not with the diagnosis, with a symptom. Translated into hematology this then becomes a lab result, intimately associated with the result from the history and the physical exam. After a VERY thorough introduction into the basics of diagnostics in hematology, the book goes through problems like pancytopenia or thrombocythosis, microcytic and macrocytic anemia or patients presenting with bleeding problems. It specifically states not to dicuss speciality knowledge, so don't expect surface marker analysis or discussion about FISH or other fancy diagnostic tests. All it tries to do is to teach you how to make a diagnosis with the common lab tests a non-hematologist usually has at hand, and it does it outstandingly well.
Although the layout is questionable, the only real draw back is, that it hasn't any pictures of physical findings in hematological diseases. Maybe it's best to supplement it with an atlas of hematology.
Over all it is THE book on the market if you want to become competent in anlysing the full bloud count and other basic hematological lab results. I would buy it again, but I am supplementing it with my internal medicine textbook for pics etc.