Pathophysiology of Kidney Disease and Hypertension

June 16, 2010 | By In Health Tips |

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2 Comments so far

  1. Rean Al Happiness on June 16th, 2010

    As a med student at UW-Madison, our class is the pilot class for this text. It reads like a first edition text with several authors/contributors, and lacks the consistency in authorship, style and prose that I have appreciated in books like Robbin’s Pathophysiology or Guyton’s Medical Physiology.

    Overall, the book reads smoothly enough and gets the point across well enough for you to leave with a good understanding of renal pathophysiology. However, you will find sections of the book repetitive or quite simply confusing due to multiple authorship (the confusing portions are relatively few, but very frustrating). We have encountered a few inaccurate statements as well. I think they could have spent more time editing it and the book could easily be 50 pages shorter and still do a good job of teaching with less confusion.

    On the plus side, they have some nice diagrams/pictures and little blue/gray boxes that summarize entire pages. This can be helpful for when you are trying to remember what you just spent the last 10 minutes reading after getting bogged down in the details, but can also be pointless and just a list of words with little meaning.

    Should you buy the book? If your class is relying on it heavily like ours, yes. If you are a book learner, this could be a good text for you. However, Big Robbins has a nice section on Renal pathophysiology that could be a sufficient resource for you too. If the book got the confusing parts cleaned up, had more consistency in style, and shortened to avoid repetition it would be a 4-5 star text.
    Rating: 3 / 5

  2. Anon on June 16th, 2010

    this book isn’t very good. each chapter has different authors and thus a different feel due to different writing styles, so there’s not really continuity. the objectives are over simplified. the “organization” within the chapters doesn’t provide much of a scaffold to try to arrange the info in your head, so you’ll spend more time than usual going over and over the same ideas to parse it out on your own. important ideas aren’t framed well, they’re just sort of randomly strewn about. the images reviewing basic physiology are quite confusing. the summary boxes that are intended to be useful quick reference are neither. i’m sure subsequent editions will be better as the authors have been receptive to feedback, but save your $ and get a different renal book for now.
    Rating: 2 / 5

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