Latifa Patel, University of Liverpool

I give this book a buyer rating of 2/5 (borrow then buy), not because I don’t think it is worth buying, simply because I think you need to have a good look at all its competitors and decide which one suits your learning best instead of wasting money and buying them all! This book does what is says on the cover. It introduces you to basic pathology! On looks it’s fairly thin compared to other pathology books, it’s very well illustrated with high colour images used. Although it is easy to follow the margins are too small to make notes and the writing size is a tad too small too. Wheater’s is a brilliant for those in who want to brush up their core knowledge. It starts by covering the main areas; cellular response, inflammation, infection and death. It then goes on to discuss the basic pathology concerned with the different systems. Pathology isn’t the easiest topic to get into and understand. Wheater’s really does attempt to ease our learning. Although as mentioned earlier the readability isn’t brilliant there are plenty of glossary tables and descriptions, chapter reviews and key note boxes to make understanding pathology easy. Well worth a read. Enjoy, Latifa (“,)

Posted 26th Apr 2010

Kayte McCann, University of East Anglia

I must admit, pathology is not my strongest of subjects. I'm hoping however that this wonderful book may help to change that. From the contents page the book is split into 'basic pathological processes' and includes inflammation, response to injury, amyloidosis... all the things you would expect. The second part is 'basic systems pathology' and this bit I absolutely adore. Split down again by system it provides capsules of information on each area. Further into the book and it's clear that the layout is beautiful, clearly thought out and will be an excellent resource for PBL scenarios. It's suitable for any medicine course as it covers core topics of medicine. More importantly, since I picked it up I haven't stopped flicking through it.. so maybe my hatred of pathology has been beaten at last!

Posted 18th Mar 2010

Sarah Edwards, Peninsula Medical School

Despite the change in authorship and the rewording of the title, the book still manages to live up to its reputation. There are 100's of very high definition quality pictures throughout the book, allowing you to see what is needed. The way the book is laid out in two major sections is very good Section 1. is basic pathology and section 2 is body systems pathology. Some of the chapters have been rewritten and some of them have been just updated. This text is a very good start to pathology in your early pre clinical years. Pathology still feels me with dread, however the way this book presents its self helps, remove some of my anxieties. This is a very good book to have as a start to pathology learning. The only thing I feel is missing is some clinical boxes.

Posted 13th Mar 2010

Dominic Haigh, University of Birmingham

This new edition loses two main things. The title Wheater's Basic Histopathology has been trimmed down to Wheater's Basic Pathology to remove the ambiguity whereby people confused the book with the similarly-titled Wheater's Functional Histology. The second thing which has been lost is the co-authorship of rock stars of histology Nottingham's Stevens and Lowe, who are replaced with Drs Stewart and O'Dowd from Glasgow. Neither of these changes signal any major change in direction for the series, and these losses are more than compensated for in gains in content. Some chapters have been completely rewritten, others have been updated, but the consistently high standard of previous editions has been maintained. Clinical descriptions of the features of disease are accompanied by slides of tissue predominantly stained with H&E and diagrams, boxes and tables where appropriate. Slides are frequently laid out side by side in order to compare the appearance of healthy tissue with pathological tissue, or to compare the appearance of one condition with that of another. This is particularly important in situations where clinical entities which can present with near-identical signs and symptoms have very different aetiologies and treatments. Different stages of the same disease, such as well-differentiated and poorly-differentiated colonic adenocarcinomas are annotated and explained. It is rare in the book to find a long stretch of unbroken text. There is at least one micrograph on each double-page spread, befitting for a book dedicated to tying together histopathological findings with clinical descriptions. Student Consult online content includes images available for personal, non-commercial use.

Posted 26th Jan 2010