VSPN Review by Sandy Conner, AS, CVT (Click on stars for an explanation)

This book is Out of Print.

A book of incredible size and scope, Pathologic Basis of Veterinary Disease, Fourth Edition is an extensive text primarily directed toward students of veterinary medicine. As in past editions, previously titled Thomson's Special Veterinary Pathology, this edition strives to provide a comprehensive approach by providing in-depth explanations on responses of cell, tissue, and organ to injury. In addition to adding a few new chapters designed to more thoroughly detail the role of pathology in veterinary medicine, this edition's best new features includes an Internet link through Elsevier Publishing to online resources that supplement the contents of the textbook.

Complimented by photographs of live animals, cadavers, and clips of microscopic views of cytological or histopathological preparations, the information available in this text provides a complete and concise guide for the veterinary student learning disease processes. As a text to be used by the veterinary technician, it can be an invaluable reference book for assisting in the care of animals through recognition of the body's conditions as related to disease processes. Veterinary technicians whose line of work places them in situations of patient management of chronic or life threatening disease, internal medicine technician specialists, oncology nurses, and pathology focused technicians, to name a few - will find this book to be an advanced resource and useful in everyday applications for patients in their care. General veterinary practitioners will also find having this book available for reference to be practical for all technician and nursing staff. To be clear, the book's focus is chiefly aimed toward large and small animal veterinary practices. It does, however, address some disease states related to wildlife/zoo animals, research subjects, marine mammals, and an occasional exotic species.

Given a book of this scope and magnitude, you would think the text would be beyond comprehension by some on the veterinary health care team. To the contrary, the majority of text is written in terms and applications that can be easily understood by everyone from the novice veterinary technicians to the most advanced students of veterinary medicine. The books' format and organization are divided among all the body systems beginning with the most basic of structures, the cell. Within each chapter, major diseases and disorders are identified many with pictorial identification of an animal representing an advanced stage of the disease. A word of warning, some of the photographs can be graphically, disturbing to view and those readers with a squeamish state of mind may not appreciate the direct nature in which these pictures are displayed. I personally found the chapter on the integument system to be of the most value to me; specifically a chart that defines and identifies through drawings and live subject photographs the morphology of primary and secondary skin lesions in an assortment of animal species.

Overall, I believe this book would be a strong addition to the veterinary hospital library for any type of practice. Generally speaking, veterinarians, technicians, and students of specialty hospitals or teaching institutions may gain the best use from a book of this scope on a daily basis, whereas general practice staff may find it more valuable as a reference text.

Mosby/Elsevier Health Publishing (published 2007).

Hardcover, 1476 pages, 2100 Illustrations.

ISBN 9780323028707.