Ferri’s Clinical Advisor 2025: 5 Books in 1

By: Fred F. Ferri, MD, FACP

ISBN: 9780443117244

Publication Date: May 27, 2024

Reviewer: Cassie Scripter, MD (University of Kansas School of Medicine – Wichita)

Description

This is a comprehensive 1700+ page book with an eBook version that covers adult and pediatric medical topics relevant to today’s practitioner. The book includes five sections entitled diseases and disorders, differential diagnosis, clinical algorithms, laboratory tests and interpretation of results, and clinical practice guidelines. The online content contains additional information on nine clinical topics as well as patient teaching guides.

Purpose

The purpose of this book is to serve as a single-source reference for practitioners in a variety of settings. It aims to provide a user-friendly, relevant, and comprehensive text for both physicians and allied health professionals. These are worthy objectives as it is imperative for the busy clinician who strives to provide efficient, evidence-based care to have a comprehensive source of information readily accessible. The print copy is large, but well-organized and is useful as a desk reference. The eBook is easily accessible in a variety of settings, including the bedside.

Audience

The book’s intended audience is physicians and allied health professionals. It specifically targets and meets the needs of primary care physicians who focus on acute, chronic, and preventive care. The author is a professor in the department of medicine at Warren Albert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

Features

This title is “5 books in 1” as it is organized into five clear sections which include diseases and disorders, differential diagnosis, clinical algorithms, laboratory tests and clinical practice guidelines. The diseases and disorders section encompasses most of the text and includes bulleted information as well as tables, algorithms, and graphics. In the first section, each disease or disorder has standardized subcategories: basic information, diagnosis, treatment, and pearls and considerations. The subcategories are further divided into sections containing information on disease and disorder definition, ICD-10 codes, epidemiology and demographics, natural history, screening and monitoring, physical findings and presentation, etiology, laboratory tests, imaging studies, nonpharmacologic therapy, acute general treatment, and chronic treatment. Each page includes headers with clear graphics indicating access to additional online material, patient teaching guides and algorithms. The differential diagnosis portion of the text includes ICD-10 codes and possible etiologies in a list format. The clinical algorithms section includes tables, graphs, flow charts, images, and algorithms. The laboratory tests and interpretation of results section includes synonyms for the laboratory tests as well as normal ranges and potential interpretation of abnormal results. The concluding section, entitled clinical practice guidelines, largely contains information on immunizations. The sections are well-organized, and the writing is succinct and easy to follow. It is useful for a quick reference or a slightly deeper dive into clinical topics. More robust sections on pharmacotherapy for major depressive disorder and obesity as well as post-operative bariatric surgery management would be clinically useful.

Practitioners would also appreciate inclusion of other common behavioral health topics such as bipolar affective disorder and generalized anxiety disorder in the text version.

Website Features

The instructions for accessing the online textbook are clear. Creating an Elsevier account is simple, and the accompanying website is easy to navigate.

The online content allows the ability to zoom in on images and provides crosslinks to additional information. Text can be highlighted or bookmarked.

The patient teaching guides are the only resources included in the multimedia resources section of the eBook and are valuable resources. Renaming this section “Patient Teaching Guides” would allow for easier understanding of what is included in this portion of the eBook. Additionally, a direct link to the appropriate teaching guide in the corresponding clinical disorder content would allow clinicians to email or print the information for the patient after reviewing material instead of scrolling through the list to find the appropriate topic. While many guides are available in Spanish, it would be useful to have all guides available in both English and Spanish.

Assessment

This book is a valuable resource for practicing clinicians as it provides a consistent, clear format with clinically relevant information. It is comparable to other medical reference textbooks such as The 5-Minute Clinical Consult 2025, 33rd Edition, Domino (Wolters Kluwer, 2025) in content, but the five comprehensive, easily accessible sections make it stand out compared to similar titles. The format is more user-friendly and concise than that of current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment 2025, 64th Edition, Papadakis et al. (McGraw Hill, 2025). The online patient teaching guides are well-written and useful to practicing physicians. Evidence-based medicine is ever-changing, and texts require constant updating to keep the busy clinician at the forefront of medical care.

©Doody’s Review Service, 2024, Cassie Scripter, MD (University of Kansas School of Medicine – Wichita), Doody’s Score: 98-5 Stars!

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