Customer Reviews

Bates' Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking, Eighth Edition, with Bonus CD-ROM

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

 

 

I liked this book but the one thing I wanted from it that it didn't have was a good musculoskeletal exam. For that, I highly recommend Pocket Guide to Musculoskeletal Diagnosis. Hoppenfeld is okay too, but Pocket Guide is better. I like Bates as a reference but it's not very practical for day-to-day use.

I am a first year medical student and use this book in our physical diagnosis course. I found this book easy to read with good illustrations. Diagrams were useful in understanding the text. I found the heart sounds CD to be extremely useful in understanding the cardiac cycle and how it relates to heart murmurs. I haven't seen other physical diagnosis textbooks but I can say that this one is very user friendly.

This is an excellent and thorough text on the physical exam. The only problem is that its based on "the way things have always been done" instead of emerging controlled trials evaluating H+P techniques objectively. You might consider purchasing one of the new evidence-based medicine physical exam texts that are beginning to pop up (Ask your docs about recommendations). Preview them first, because not all of them teach the actual techniques or present the differential diagnosis of findings as well as Bates. They do, however, actually include numbers (percentages, Likelihood ratios, etc) to tell you how sensitive and specific (read how useful) these methods really are. These numbers will be critical to you later in evidence-based practice (which is not what all physicians now practice) in order to determine the pre- and post-test (lab, X-ray, etc.) probabilities of your differential diagnoses.
Buying an evidence-based text now would save you from having to buy both like I did.

This book is the best one on physical exam that I've found, but is not great by any means. It's very boring to read. Unfortunately, physical exam is something you have to practice, and reading a book won't help much. You have to SEE someone with experience perform an exam for it to really sink in.

I think it's way too expensive.

This book at one time was good I am told, but the 8th edition (2002) is now outdated with many errors. The CD on heart sounds which is included is insulting to medical students. The book has terrible photographs which make the patients look jaundiced or cyanotic. I am sorry I bought it. There is no question that Swartz's book on physical diagnosis is the best. Swartz has a great free CD on the complete physical exam which is included with the book.

This book was written for no one in mind. It reads as a single run-on sentence from page one to the end. You cannot learn physical exam from it (or from any other book -- you simply have to practice) and Bates is a rather mediocre reference if you need to find out how to examine this or that.

Physical exam is a dying art and I'm yet to find a semi-decent modern text on the subject.

Undoubtedly this book has gone a long way to perfect herself but certain gross errors exist , an example being an opening shap being mentioned as a "low pitched" sound (along with S3 and mid diastolic murmur) in page 307 and a picture of Herpes Zoster being labelled as Herpes Simplex in page 137 .
Considering the size of the book, the hardbound cover and the way of presentation,the coverage should be so as to benefit postgraduates also by inclusion of certain finer and additional details even at the cost of a mild increase in size.
The lucid explanations and clear illustrations are definitely invaluable and make the book outstanding in its field.
The few corrections can always be undertaken.
Professor K.N.Viswanathan, AVMC, Pondicherry, INDIA.

I would not recommend this book. On techniques of examination of the Nose and Sinuses this book shows and tells you to use an otoscope with an ear speculum to examine the nose. This is wrong. The correct way to examine the nose is with a bivalve nasal speculum and a penlight or a headlight. Also an ear speculum should only be used to examine the external auditory canal of the ear. When Dr. Barbara Bates was the author of this book this correct information on the nasal examination was in the book. Dr. Bickley should not have taken correct information out of this book and inserted wrong information. Also this book does not have posterior rhinoscopy(examination of the nasopharynx with a nasopharyngeal mirror), indirect laryngoscopy with a laryngeal mirror, anoscopy, and sigmoidoscopy. I recommend Textbook of Physical Diagnosis 4th ed. by Mark Swartz, M.D. for Physical Diagnosis courses not Bickley's book.

I purchased this book for a course I was taking to supplement the lecture. The book is very detailed and will remain on my shelves as a reference for years to come.

The book was just like they said it would be, shipping was great, I'm happy! Great condition, no damage.