Customer Reviews

Physiology: Cases and Problems: Board Review Series

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a fantastic book for med school physiology, especially if you find lecture boring and need a book to bring the dry material into a clinical context. the book presents classic presentations and data, asks questions about the physiology behind the symptoms, and then explains the answers. the explanations are laid out simply using nicely worded paragraphs and incorporating all those nasty equations so that they make sense!

This book is AMAZING! I found it helpful for learning physiology as a first year student and also for pulling everything together as I studied each system second year. The cases are presented in a clear, concise format and the explanations are logical and so easy to understand. By far the best book I've used in medical school.

I had this book during first year phys and only did a few cases from it (not enough time). But once I started reviewing for Step 1, I went through the whole book - fantastic!

I started my review for each systems chapter in First Aid by doing the corresponding cases in Costanzo. This gave me an in-depth, conceptual review, which is what you need for Step 1. And, it's hard to have the discipline to work through the physiology; these cases help you really understand the material. Highly recommended.

As a 2nd-year med student, I've ready many medical textbooks, but this little gem is one of the best. The case studies are excellent and the book pulls together a lot of interesting and useful information. If you are a 1st or 2nd year med student, then I highly recommend this book to you.

An excellent way to test your understanding of basic concepts in physiology. A great way to supplement your physiology/medical school courses.

I have to disagree with the other reviewers on this. If I could go back I would have gotten the BRS Physiology book, as opposed to this cases and problems. This book is only really effective perhaps as an add on to the BRS book. Each system has about 6-8 cases in it, and a lot of material is not covered. I was especially annoyed by the lack of reproductive system material (which consisted of 3 cases dealing with ambiguous sex syndromes). What about normal reproductive physiology? This book highlights the big points, and the explanations to the questions are very thorough, but if you are looking for an all in one comprehensive book, Id choose the BRS physio. This just seems like an attempt to sell more books by taking some info from the other book and putting it in vignette question/answer form

I bought this book as a major source of studying for my physio shelf exam and that was a big mistake. While this book is a great read, and written very well, it in no way covers the detail that you have to know for the physio shelf exam. It focused a lot on problems and equations which is good because that was the part that I had the most trouble with, but in the SHELF, and probably in the USMLE, there are very few calculations you have to do. I think there were only 2 questions where I had to perform calculations on my shelf.

This books provides clinical cases and problems that will help anyone pass a boardexam or graduate level medical physiology course. They key is to understand every case and practice all the problems. This book changed my class average by an entire letter grade!

I like the cases; they touch upon all the high yield concepts. Also, it is an easy read and will not take very long to finish.

This book contains 60 cases in physiology. At the first glance, the cases can seem dry and trivial. It made a huge difference when I, as a first year medical student, decided to ditch class and work through BRS Physiology (Board Review Series) on my own.

Here is what I do: I read BRS physiology until I cannot read on anymore. I then turn to this book to keep me motivated. If there's a concept I haven't read, reading the cases, problems and explanations motivated me to read the relevant sections in BRS physiology. It may not be the best way, but it definitely takes away the boredom of reading through 40 pages of a physiology text on say, the cardiology section, before you can start doing problems.

Also, the cases and problems include details that are not covered in the BRS Physiology text also by Constazo, at least not to my knowledge. She may go into more details in this book than the BRS physiology book, which allows you to see the big picture. Her explanations are thorough so you really understand what's going on. The cool thing about the cases here is that a case may be in the cardiology section, but it also talks about how the patient's kidneys and lungs are affected, which is what you will see in the real world!

And as an aside, if you are like me who likes to annotate on books, you really don't need to write on this one. I annotate my BRS Physiology as I go through this. Planning to sell it as a new copy after I finish reading it. You may lose a couple of bucks while doing that, but I think it's totally worth it.