BOOK REVIEW

Gray’sAnatomyReviewbyMarios Loukas,GeneL. Colborn, Peter H. Abrahams, and Stephen W.Carmichael, Churchill Livingstone/Elsevier, Phila-delphia, PA, 2010 (soft cover), 269pages, $39.95.

Gray’s Anatomy Review is designed as a self-assessmentresource, where students can test their anatomical knowl-edge in the setting of a wide variety of clinical cases. Thisbook appears to be primarily aimed at those studentsapproaching the end of their courses or preparing for quali-fying examinations, although there is plenty of relevant anduseful information covered which makes it accessible for awide range of students at different learning levels.

The introduction of more integrated courses with earlyclinical contact has meant that an enhanced clinical flavorto anatomy teaching is prevalent at earlier stages and,therefore, makes this review text very relevant. Theapproach taken deliberately mirrors the most recent editionof Gray’s Anatomy for Students with a regional anatomicalformat based on a clinical focus. This does not alienatethose students who have used alternative texts, as manyalso use a regional approach. There is an impressive collec-tion of cases/questions for each region, many accompaniedby a number of high-quality images.

The overall layout of the book is effective. The text ofeach question is clear and logical and the answer reviewsare extremely informative. If I had one small criticism itwould be that the answer reviews do not always follow thesame format, that is, with the reason for the correct answerappearing first followed by the reasons why the alternativeanswers are incorrect. The direct correlations to pages inGray’s Anatomy for Students and Gray’s Atlas of Anatomyare a great idea for students who wish to go back over

areas of particular difficulty or remind themselves ofspecific details. However, this will require updates of thebook whenever new editions of the main text and atlas arepublished.

My suggestions for future editions would include anincreased number of illustrations or images and the inclu-sion of further descriptions of some of the terms used,which should prove useful to readers who are less familiarwith some of the clinical terminology in the book. The multi-ple-choice question format obviously is designed with theUSMLE examinations in mind and, whilst I think this iseffective, such an approach is less favored in other parts ofthe world. Therefore, the inclusion of some other questionformats would increase the relevance to more studentsand, from a pedagogical viewpoint, would avoid some ofthe restricted ways the cases are presented. I also lookforward to an online version.

Over the past few years there have been a number of newtextbooks incorporating questions and answers, various flashcard sets, and some specific review texts covering the field ofclinical anatomy. I feel that Gray’s Anatomy Review is anextremely strong addition to these approaches and shoulddefinitely be a natural companion for students close to or atthe qualifying stage of their learning. Also, this review textshould be of great use to recently qualified students or doc-tors engaged in their specialty training. I can imagine thatmany anatomy teachers also will use it as a guiding resourcefor formative and summative assessments.

Darrell Evans*Professor, Associate Dean

and Head of AnatomyBrighton and Sussex Medical School

Brighton, United Kingdom

*Correspondence to: Professor Darrell J. R. Evans, Head of Anat-omy, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of SussexCampus, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9PX, United Kingdom.E-mail: d.evans@bsms.ac.uk

Received 11 May 2009; Accepted 12 May 2009

Published online 15 June 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ca.20821

VVC 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Clinical Anatomy 22:636 (2009)