"Remarkably up to date.Provides the reader with a current understanding of disease mechanisms and deserves a place on the shelf of any health care professional, irrespective of specialty or level of training." - JAMA, review of previous edition
"Praiseworthy for the breadth and depth of its content and its ability to remain up to date. It serves the needs not only of the beginning student, the pathologist in training, but all practitioners of medicine with intellectual curiosity." - Modern Pathology, review of previous edition
"Bound to retain its standing as the definitive source for learning, or relearning, the principles of the pathologic basis of disease." - Advances in Anatomic Pathology, review of previous edition
"This book is even shorter than before. That is really impressive. I cannot but admire this book, which I keep re-reading since I entered Pathology in 1966. Wow, it shows that even a first class book can be improved - hard to believe but true. It is very readable and even funny in some places. The text is nicely laid out and the book looks less bulky than the previous edition. The illustrations are excellent. Even though the book is definitely for the new generations, I am sure that it will be welcomed by senior pathologists trying to keep up with the times - I doubt that I am the only old timer eager to re-read it." -
Ivan Damjanov, MD, PhD, author of Pathology Secrets and Pathophysiology
Owner Reviews, Ratings, Comments and Criticism
There is no doubt majority of medical students throughout the world use this book. And I do think it is very informative. But you must be willing to spend a lot of time reading it, especially if this is the only book you plan on using in pathology. Because it takes a lot of time to comb through the huge amount of info in this book to pick out what is important for medical students to remember. So I would recommend most medical students to also buy Rapid Review Pathology: With STUDENT CONSULT Online Access because it is much more clinically oriented and also gives you the pathophysiology behind the symptoms which Robbins does not. I also feel that though Robbins does a good job mentioning the symptoms in a concise manner, it could do a lot better integrating the symptoms with the pathology. So I would use this book as a reference book in the truest sense. Meaning I would get a brief idea of the topic from Rapid Review or some other source and then read Robbins if you have time. But for certain things you will probably have to go directly to Robbins. For example, Robbins does a great job with the morphology, which is some what lacking in most review books like Rapid Review and BRS. I would buy the book only if you have a good amount of time to learn the subject or just really like pathology. But i would NOT buy it if you are
1. looking for a quick review, ie before step 1 (because really most of info in this book wont help there)
2. if you dont have a lot of time to focus solely on pathology and this book. Because as I said it will take time for you to read through all the info and pick out important points that you need to learn. And on top of that to be able to do this, you will first have to get use to the writing style of this book which is very different. (often study based)
As for difference between 7th and 8th editions. I personally dont think there is that much of a difference. The authors mention extensively redoing the first chapter and third. But other than that I think its mostly reorganizing and making it look more pleasing. ie cut from here and paste there. So I dont think its worth buying 8th if you have the 7th. And if you are really tight on cash I would buy the 7th. I really don't think they have changed the info at all specially in systemic pathology.
