Media Type: Textbook

Synopsis: This wonderfully written reference is for anyone who looks at the fundus. The information is concise and spans from the elementary (how to examine the retina with a direct ophthalmoscope) to lists of complete differential diagnoses including less common diseases. The book begins with ocular anatomy, and then reviews the clinical signs of disease in the retina with their differential diagnoses, followed by a fairly complete list of diseases and how they manifest in the retina. The book does not review the course of diseases or their treatments, but it is nonetheless a very handy reference source and review book.

Target Audience: Medical Students, Ophthalmologists, Optometrists, and Physicians of many specialties

Review: This book fills a very good niche. It is better than a pure atlas of color pictures with little associated text material, or a book which lists different differential diagnoses with no pictures or other supplemental information in it. It is like the retina section of a Wills manual with excellent color photos minus the workup and treatment information. The book, of course, only covers the retina and does not cover uveitis well, but it does review many less common entities such as drug-related retinopathy, optic nerve abnormalities, ocular oncology, and pediatric retina.

This book would be difficult to read without some preliminary fund of knowledge, but it is a great review book for ophthalmology residents studying for boards or OKAPs after reading the Academy Manuals. This book has wonderful clinical photos and associates differential diagnoses with the findings in an easy to read and logical fashion. The organization of the book is helpful in synthesizing a diagnosis related to a variety of findings in the retina, and allows one to categorize information in an orderly way.

One other advantage of this book is its size. It is small, light-weight, and fits easily in a coat pocket, making it quick to reference. The organization of the second section of this book allows one to look up diseases by findings, and the third section allows one to look up diseases by the disease entity itself. All sections of the book have very high resolution color photos, thereby allowing the reader to see all of the described findings in vivid detail. In the third section of the book (on disease entities), each sub-section starts with a brief synopsis on the disease itself, then reviews the ”fundus features,” followed by ”other ophthalmic features” (and sometimes ”systemic features” of the disease), and then shows one or several of the fundus findings described in the text about that particular disease.

This is a book that every ophthalmologist should read. It is clearly organized and has a wealth of easily found diagnostic information in its pages. One can look up entities by disease findings with their associated differential diagnoses or by specific disease name with a short description of the disease and corresponding findings with high resolution color photos as good as any atlas. This is a distilled source of retinal knowledge with excellent photos that helps one confirm clinical findings associated with a disease.