Acid-Base, Fluids, and Electrolytes Made Ridiculously Simple

by Richard Arthur Preston

Book Overview

Univ. of Miami, FL. Concise handbook on solving problems concerning complex fluid, electrolyte, and acid-base complications. For medical students, interns, residents, nurses and nurse practitioners,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0940780313
• ISBN13: 9780940780316
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Medmaster
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Your Lifesaver in Fluid & Electrolytes Ocean!

I purchased this book with some doubt, because you see a very high variability in these series. Now, i am very happy. Every medical student and resident gets frustrated with fliuid and electrolytes. Reading textbooks makes it worse. I have seen a lot of attendings and Nephrologists (!!) who are scared of this subject. This book can help you tremendously. It is written in a very simple language and gives you the proper approach to fluid and electrolyte problems. It is full of practical examples that you will see every day and shows you how to solve them. After reading this book, you will be confident enough to deal with electrolytes. Instead of replacing electrolytes blindly with K-Dur and Neutra-Phos and .... and not knowing what to do with Hyponatremia, you will have a nice framework in your brain to deal with them. And the best part: It is a small book. Don't hesitate to get it. You won't regret.

Foundation is the key

This is an excellent book for those interested in laying the foundation toward the understanding of fluids and acid/base. This is an exceptionally intricate topic but this book really does a great job in getting you started. I think the target audience is ideally the 3rd year medical student. However, it is never too late to read this book and as a resident I go back to it on occasion to help me to see the greater picture. This book is very interesting and can be read with understanding in a weekend. However, I must say this is one of those books that should be read many times over. Every time I pick it up I learn something new...however, that is part of the beauty of acid/base and electrolytes in general. I believe that electrolytes are the key to much of medicine. However, most students/residents/attendings dismiss electrolytes as if they represent merely yesterday's news. As stated - I think this book is really a very good STARTER-book. The electrolytes fever may take place here. Should you catch the fever I have two more books that I highly recommend. Pick up Mitch Halperin's Fluid, Electrolyte, and Acid-Base Physiology. This book is full of clinical examples and uses a practical integrative physiology approach to learning. Well worth any amount of money that you put down. Burton Rose's Clinical Physiology of Acid-Base and Electrolyte Disorders is a beautiful text as well. This is the "Up-to-Date" guy that many residents/physicians use while on-call. Heck, most physicians that use the service have read his hyponatremia sections in Up-to-Date. Well, his book will NOT disappoint.

Excellent nuts and bolts perspective

I'm glad I found this - fluids and acid/base is one of those topics that is easy to get a grip on (even basic EMT's have a fair working knowledge of it) but very difficult to master, unless someone shows you the path. In this case, the path goes through the loop of Henle, and while you will get lost if you don't know your renal physiology (you better know the loop cold) this is the best little volume I've ever seen for laying it all out. It is a very dense book - there is no fluff. I gave up highlighting after a while because nearly every line was important. It will also bear repeated readings. Some of the chapters only made sense on the second or third reading, and this was with the material made as simple as it could be made. But if you're stuck on nephrology and acid/base and can't seem to make heads or tails of this topic, I highly recommend this little book. It also greatly benefits from multiple real world exercises using the many formulae that you'll learn, calculating fluid and electrolyte defecits. Great stuff. For PA's and MD's (and students of same.) I can't see it being of any real use to staff nurses unless they work in a really high speed ICU or they just want to know a lot more than they learned in school.

Ridiculously Amazing

First - to comment on the "negative reviews": 1 - Yes, you need to know some renal physio to read this book, this is a book that is highly recommended for Medical Students, not for patient education. 2 - Right - this book is not intended to teach Renal physio -- read the title of this book. Dont look for explanations on GFR and the such in here -- this book was not made for this. Ok - now my review: This book will help you in your clinical studies tremendously -- it helped me while taking internal medicine (helps you finally learn which patients need which kinds of fluids with which supplementations, and at what rate to give it, etc.), tx of DKA is prevalent in my hospital and it helped with that too. It helped me in Critical Care -- where accurate reading of ABGs is mandatory, hyponatremia/pseudohyponatremia is super common, and other electrolyte disturbances need to be evaluated. Even helped me in GI! I haven't taken Nephro yet -- but I am sure it will help me there too. This book is concise, logical, and clear. It makes tough topics easy to understand, but does not oversimplify. Topics that are super high yield for clinical practice and step 2 are explained perfectly. Perfect for med students. I think it will be too simplistic for residents -- who I think already know this stuff cold. This book is great and I highly recommend it.

Thank goodness for this book

Acid/Base Made Simple was a very valuable guide during all four years of med school -- it saved me more than a few times from embarassing gaps in knowledge. Three of my residents said that they still use it as their primary reference when they encounter acid/base physiology problems. The explanations were crystal clear and the topics addressed are all clinically important ones that come up again and again in the hospital. The book has excellent diagrams, but its strongest point I thought was it's writing style. In contrast to many books on the subject, this one is written in a casual, almost conversational style that makes it so much easier to read and learn. This is one of the few books that has earned a spot on my bookshelf and will not be sold at the end of med school!