Customer Reviews

USMLE Road Map: Gross Anatomy

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

 

 

Good USMLE step 1 anatomy books are really tuff to come by, and, unfortunately, this book is one of the best on the market. Lets face it, it is a low yeild topic that is really tough to review, and if you take this book at face value, you are going to be wasting a lot of time reading about minute details that don't matter. Each chapter is really bogged down in picky details about the orientation and placement of structures within the body, which means that you are going to need to spend some time to go through this book in its entirety. The good news is that there is a much easier way to study for USMLE step 1 anatomy using this book. Each chapter has boxes that gives clinical scenarios about how an anatomic problem might present. I had no anatomy question on step 1 that wasn't covered in these boxes! Know them well, and you will do well on step 1's anatomy! I also recommend looking at the radiographic pictures in this book. I found this book to be a little light on images, but it covered everything that was on the test. In summary, if you choose this book, don't get booged down in remembering every detail after reading each chapter, but make sure that you know the clinical presentations and the images really well!

It is difficult finding an adequate review book for the COMLEX. The COMLEX asks more anatomy questions than the USMLE and these questions are often detailed. This book has excellent clinical references (like the Moore-Dalley blue boxes) and sums up the details you will need to know. It might be too detailed of a book for the USMLE since anatomy tends to be a lower yield subject on this exam. If you are planning on taking the COMLEX, however, this review book is a must-have.

This is a helpful book for hitting the high points of gross anatomy in a concise and easy-to-read format. Pluses of the book include simple illustrations and clinical correlates (and a lower cost than most USMLE review books), but that seems to come at a cost--there are a number of errors throughout the book, most notably regarding the nervous system. I would highly recommend using a different source to study autonomic innervation. Otherwise, this is a good reminder of those long-forgotten anatomy facts in a quick and easy format.

This is a great review of Anatomy for the Step 1. If you spend half a day skimming through this book reading the blue boxes and looking a the key drawings you will be well prepared for the questions on the exam.

great Anatomy review for nerves, blood supply, muscle function. easy to read with good charts and vignette questions

A friend told me about this book- it saved me in Anatomy my weakest subject in school- it explained stuff better than first aid for the boards, great vignette questions. Friends said that nerve questions on the exam were similar to those in the book.
An absolute must buy!

I bough this book thinking that I would need to review alot of anatomy for the Boards but the reality is that anatomy is not a big topic. This book has too few details to be useful in a full anatomy course and maybe just a bit long for a Board review book. I would stick with the anatomy that is present on the First Aid and focus on doing anatomy passages from a database like Q-Bank.

This book would have been too simple to study alone for our anatomy course during the first year of medical school, but I think they feed us more detail than many other schools. It's more than sufficient for Step 1 and the clinical correlates highlight very pertinent facts that are good to know first year AND for step 1. I needed a companion anatomy atlas, though, because the pictures are limited.

I'm a first year med student and I bought this book when we had our anatomy course. I didn't really use it much during the class because our school doesn't really emphasize clinically relevant anatomy and it was not detailed enough. However, I decided to review anatomy over winter break and it's proving to be very useful for that. I'm learning lots of clinical information and it's presented in a simple way, allowing me to fly through pages fairly quickly. The review of anatomy is thorough but not invested in detail which I love. I'm reading the review book in combination with looking at Netter's (since the images in the book are not great), and it's working wonderfully. Not sure how this book prepares you for boards but I'll probably read through it a few more times before my dedicated study period.

I'm a first-year medical student, so I didn't buy this book to study for the boards (at least not yet...) I was told that it would be a helpful supplement for my anatomy course, and it really is! It spends a lot of time describing the pathological states associated with all the anatomy that we're learning, which helps me put things in perspective - and also helps me with exam questions that involve injuries, e.g. "What muscle actions would be affected by a mid-shaft fracture of the humerus?" It's something that I could maybe figure out on my own if I had a really functional knowledge of the anatomy of the arm, but it helps to have that knowledge spelled out for me.

I also like that the book focuses on anatomy instead of going on lengthy excursions to explain related concepts from histology or biochemistry. For instance, the section about kidneys mentions the context of nephrons and loops of Henle in the gross anatomy of the kidney but doesn't spend a few pages explaining how nephrons work. For that reason this would make a lousy textbook, but I think it makes a really useful study aid for anatomy specifically.

I wish the diagrams in the book were a little more descriptive or more labeled, though - when I study with this, I usually have to keep an anatomy atlas next to me to see a picture of what this book is describing.