Netter’s Neurology, 3rd Edition

By Jayashri Srinivasan, Claudia Chaves, Brian Scott and Juan E. Small, MD, MSc

ISBN: 9780323554763

Pub Date: 15 May 2019

Reviewed by: Elan Miller, MD (Thomas Jefferson University)

Description

The book covers a wide breadth of clinical neurology. It is divided into sections, many of which correlate so neurological subspecialties, and then chapters focusing on a particular disease or condition. It uses clinical vignettes to emphasize particularly clinically relevant points. The accompanying ebook is available and easy to access, with a reasonable online user interface including hyperlinks to pictures and references. There are also printable patient education brochures using Netter’s paintings available online. The prior two editions were published in 2012 and 2005.

Purpose

The purpose is to use Netter’s neurological illustrations as a basis for creating a comprehensive clinical neurology book. This is a worthwhile goal because Netter’s illustrations are often very enlightening and having them linked to a book about neurology enriches the illustrations. Overall, the book and website meet the objectives of using Netter’s illustrations as a scaffolding on which to build a comprehensive neurology text book.

Audience

This book is written for students, residents, and general neurology practitioners. It does not target any subspecialty in neurology and does not go into great depth about any particular topic. The book does meet the need of its audience.

Features

This is a broad overview of neurology, including neuroanatomy and some basic science, clinical neurology including diagnosis and treatment, and clinical vignettes broken down by topics within neurology and then by specific disease.The book is organized well and in a way that makes sense to a neurologist. The writing is standard for a textbook, but the Netter illustrations make it more interesting. Netter’s color art is, of course, beautiful and detailed and the main draw of this book. The only problem is that the graphics are somewhat smaller than they are in a book of Netter’s plates, but much of the detail is preserved. Because of the nature of the book, there are times when an illustration that would help drive home a point is in another area of the book.However, with just a little page turning, it is not difficult to find.However, with just a little page turning, it is not difficult to find.

Assessment

This is an interesting and worthwhile overview of general clinical neurology as well as general neuroanatomy and some basic neuroscience. Of course, the Netter illustrations are the centerpiece and the main draw. The illustrations are beautiful, and a lot of knowledge can be gleaned from studying them alone without even reading the accompanying text. This alone makes this book different and unique among other general neurology books. The website is helpful and certainly a great accompaniment.

Doody’s Review Service Weighted Numerical Score: 90-4 Stars!