FAQ #22: What Books Do You Use for the Cardiopulmonary and Renal Blocks?

These are books that are specific for the individual organ blocks. The first three organs that you will cover once you get back from fall break are cardiovascular, pulmonary, and renal. After renal, which we are finishing now, you have two weeks of winter break before starting the next block in January. I'll post the other block books later.

Cardiovascular: The school suggested that we use Berne's Cardiovascular Physiology, which is part of the Mosby series. I like that series in general, so the book is probably decent. But I wound up buying Klabunde's Cardiovascular Physiology Concepts after we were assigned to read parts of that book that are posted online on his website. The Klabunde book is really good, and it comes with a DVD and extra info that was very useful for my PBL presentations. I don't think you need to buy both the Berne and the Klabunde books though, unless you you're planning to go into cardiology or just really like reading about it. We were also asked to buy Schmaier and Petruzzelli's Hematology for the Medical Student. You can get away without having this book during the cardiovascular block, but you'll need it in the spring for the heme block. So I think it's worth getting now. Another book that I found really useful was Dubin's Rapid Interpretation of EKGs. This book is written like a cartoon workbook, but you will learn a lot about EKGs from it, and you can get through it quickly. I don't think it's on the list of suggested books, but it seriously should be.

Respiratory: Definitely buy West's The Essentials: Respiratory Physiology. West is the pulmonary physio guru. His book is awesome.

Renal: You will need to buy Koeppen's Renal Physiology, which is also part of the Mosby series. It's a good book, and I thought it was easy to read. I also bought Rose and Post's Clinical Physiology of Acid-Base and Electrolyte Disorders. There is a renal physio section at the beginning, but this book is really helpful to have for PBL objectives because most of it covers renal pathology. You definitely don't need to have it though, and I think there's a copy available in the library.

Oh, and I'd suggest getting yourself a medical dictionary too. Learning medicine is seriously like learning a whole other language sometimes. I got Dorland's Medical Dictionary, which is pretty good.