The Review of Ophthalmology, third edition, by Drs Neil Friedman, Peter Kaiser and William Trattler, has quickly become one of my favourite textbooks. It is a one-stop comprehensive review book, richly filled with concise bullet points of key information.
The 11 chapters cover all subspecialties as well as optics, pharmacology, embryology, anatomy and pathology. With a strong clinical focus, it walks the reader through pertinent symptoms, findings, diagnosis and treatment. The book is visually well designed with a nice flow and consistent formatting throughout. The text is in concise bullet points, which makes the read easy-to-digest and follow. There are high quality clinical and histological images, and large illustrations are used to demonstrate concepts and anatomy.
New to this edition are clinical scenario-based review questions at the end of every chapter. These multiple-choice style questions provide a nice breather from reading factual information and are helpful to consolidate learning.
Perhaps the most impressive feature of this book are the generous sections summarising findings of key clinical studies. These allow the reader to rapidly access up-to-date, evidence-based treatment and management information across all subspecialty areas.
With 416 pages in total, and at more or less A4 paper size, the book is too large to be readily portable. However, the eBook companion can be viewed on your mobile or laptop and is easily accessible to all book owners through a unique code supplied within each cover. The online version is easy to navigate and allows the reader to make notes alongside each section, magnify images to a sufficient resolution full screen and perform useful searches.
