Sectional Anatomy Review

Rating:
Summary: There must be a better book out there...
Review: I was required to use Mr. Madden's book and workbook for a sectional anatomy class I took for a medical program. This could be a pretty good book, but misses the mark for several reasons:

1. Mislabeling. Many structures are just plain labeled wrong, sometimes egregiously wrong, such as aorta for trachea, etc.
2. Incomplete labeling. For example, in a section where location and identification of common carotids is hugely important, Mr. Madden labels either one side of the image only or something like "int/ext common carotid" without distinguishing which is which. However, knowing which is which is vital!
3. Text boxes. Usually Mr. Madden notes salient features in the text boxes on the facing plates to the CT or MR. However, even when he stresses important anatomical landmarks, he DOES NOT LABEL them on the diagram accompanying the image. The student reads the words but has no way to identify the structure. This is pointless!
4. Lack of correlation: Many times, structures just "appear" on a plate with no connection to their partial appearance on preceding or subsequent plates; yet it is this exact skill that is the foundation of an understanding of sectional anatomy.
5. Workbook: At no time in the workbook does Mr. Madden show a simple schematic indicating the plane of section. This is vital for reference and, again, for correlation.
6. Erroneous terms: There are erroneous, mistyped, misedited, or just plain invented medical terms, such as "optic chiasma" (should be chiasm) and "lenticular nucleus" (should be lentiform).

This book seems like a work in progress but no one is improving it. Why not? For the money, the medical student should get a lot more. Anyone with suggestions of a better book (other than Moller/Reif's atlases of sectional anatomy, which are simple and elegant, but could use textual explanations for the beginner), please e-mail me. Perhaps future editions of this book will display some needed corrections.

Rating:
Summary: Makes a poor text book seem even worse.
Review: This workbook falls in line with Mr. Madden's textbook, "Introduction to Sectional Anatomy"; (2001) Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

As with the text, correlating the line drawings with the poor quality print reprodutions of actual images is frustrating. The author compounded the problem by not providing any frame of reference for the level of the slices.

I guess since the pictures in the workbook match exactly the pictures in the text, page for page, there was no need for one. However, this greatly reduces the value of doing the workbook execrises.

There has got to be a better way to teach sectional anatomy.