Customer Reviews

Pediatric Imaging: Case Review Series, 1e

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This new addition to the Case Review series is the worst of the bunch. The diagnoses are well chosen, but unclear writing style and, much more significantly, poor editing combine to make this book far less valuable than it could have been.

In many cases, the images are so dark that they cannot be interpreted, even after the findings have been described. For some reason, the editors have chosen to make many of the images very small, so that a postage-stamp-sized image and a few sparsely worded questions appear in the corner of an otherwise blank, wasted page. Too-numerous grammatical and spelling errors combine to make the prose somewhat difficult to follow at times.

The authors have departed from the style of previous Case Review books by, in many cases, including questions that are unrelated to the diagnosis being presented. Presumably, this is meant to test the reader by eliminating the ability of the questions to suggest the proper diagnosis. However, the effect is to make the text even harder to follow and less informative, especially when the images are too small and dark to interpret. Often, the salient findings of an image are not discussed at all, and some cases are therefore rendered without any real educational value at all.

This book falls far short of the others in the Case Review series.

This is without question the worst of the series. Typos, black pearls, text often doesn't refer to the pictures at all. Better than nothing...I suppose, but really substandard. I hope they didn't pay a real editor for this sloppy work.

Not worth waiting for.

The diagnoses are well chosen. Images are not perfect but in most cases good enough to see the pertinent findings. Everything goes downhill from here.

What was most troubling was that the book contains many factual innacuracies (confusing intra/extra lobar sequestration, creutzfeld-jacob virus as the causative factor in PML, I could go on and on. After doing half of the cases, I stopped believing much of what the authors had to say in the discussions.

Many typos which did not bother me. Annoying unrelated questions and long useless discussions. Poor differentials in most cases. Their differential for a JNA was every tumor under the sun that could happen in the nasopharynx of a teenage boy.

Having said all that, there are very few case related resources for the orals in pediatrics. I think that for $40, this book is still better than nothing. Each case often has more than one image so that at least you get a sense of what the disease looks like on different modalities.

If you were wondering, the poor reviews below are accurate. The book is okay, at best for its choice of topics and superficial discussions. However, the discussions have little to do with the images. There is no explanation of the findings. Altogether a terrible job putting this book together. It seems so obvious how to make a good case review book. This isnt it.

This is the worst of the Case Review series. It has poor image quality. The cases and images are poorly chosen and are not representative of classic presentations. The format is not differential diagnosis-based, which is inappropriate for an oral boards review book.

Most times, unless the reader absolutely knows everything about the case, one can't figure out what the confusing and poor quality images show. Try to even find a differential diagnosis in the rambling explanations and you may be eligible for a cash prize!!!

This book is simply terrible. Having decent cases is a given for a book of this type, but one also expects a somewhat respectable discussion of the image findings and questions that actually delve further into the diagnosis/differential on the images. Instead this book presents small, dark images, often has questions relating to diagnoses not even in the differential of the case diagnosis, and even those questions are suspect in usefulness. I believe the author simply gave the chore of writing this book to a medical student, or worse an undergraduate. How else could one of the case questions ask "What is a feline esophagus" only to have an answer of something to the effect of "the tube that connects a cat's mouth to its stomach." I kid you not.

This book has a good selection of pediatric cases followed by description and discussion.
I recommend this one just like all the others from this collection (Case review).
Just read it when you get some free time to spare.

This book provides a good review of pediatric radiology. The cases are appropriate and discussed well (a couple typos don't bother me too much), and the images may be on the small side but are definitely diagnostic. Emphasis on pathophysiology was a real strength. I'm not entirely sure what the controversy is about. It's actually an improvement not to be handed the diagnoses in the questions.

Sure this book is getting some flack from reviews and my fellow collegues, but if you want some more cases to review for Peds oral boards, this has been a good place to go after reading Donnelly (I've learned some new things from the cases). And let's face it, there are not that many Radiology Peds review books. The questions take a little getting use to. Although some of the questions may not be directly related to the case at hand, most appeared relavant: either pearls or related to the topic (aka pimp questions). One strength to the book was that good differentials were given. As with the other case review books, it would be nice to have a sentence or two describing the findings in the images, since the findings are not always apparent (to me) and would be helpful for studying for the descriptive component for oral boards.