Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins’ update on Dr. Daffner’s introductory text on radiologic imaging is an outstanding resource even before the relatively affordable price and inclusion of online access to full text is considered. Following those considerations, this is essentially a “must-have” for anyone involved in medical student radiology education (that, of course, includes medical students).
I recall fondly using the first edition (1993) of this book when I was a medical student and found it to be an excellent book at that time for someone who wanted to study radiology at the introductory level but wanted a combination of normal (but relevant) clinical anatomy and clinical cases that you could tackle as a student. This update has certainly “freshened it up” and made it timelier. At first, I was concerned about some of the images not being optimized in the book (in terms of how well they came through the printing process and “effects of time”)—and, quite honestly, they are not optimized in many occasions herein. However, the online version clears that up and the images are fantastic online. The one thing I would suggest for improvement is to update all of the images; for example, one of the intracranial extra-axial hematomas was a scanned-in (from printed film) picture from 1994 (the date was included on the figure).
There were several really exceptional aspects within this book which were also relatively unusual. One was the “Diagnostic Radiology Timeline,” which is quite extensive. The descriptions of how images are made in simple terms are excellent and appropriately pitched. I also read with great enjoyment “Daffner’s Diagnostic Pearls”—really quite excellent and a nice complement to the book’s character, I think.
The organization of the book is, otherwise, relatively standard (although neuroimaging has been broken up into “cranial,” “spine,” and other sections). When I read this book I felt like the surface area of the pages is >50% pictures and that this aspect of the book was very engaging—I liked it in 1993 and I still like it today. This book is probably best suited for medical students but would also likely be of utility for interns, radiology residents early on in their rotations, allied health practitioners, and non-radiologist clinicians.
Contents: ★★★★
Readability: ★★★★
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