Abstract
By Andrew Blann
Keswick, UK: M&K Publishing, 2013
150 pp, Price £25
ISBN 978-1-905539-88-8
By Graham Basten
Keswick, UK: M&K Publishing, 2013
80 pp, Price £16
ISBN 978-1-905539-73-4
These two books cover similar ground, their objectives being primarily to assist healthcare professionals in the understanding and interpretation of the more straightforward (I abhor the term ‘routine’ – it suggests something being done automatically, without conscious consideration) blood tests performed in clinical practice. ‘Healthcare professions’ in this context includes nurses, phlebotomists, pharmacists, physiotherapists and radiographers. Although the list of suggested readers of ‘Blood results in Clinical Practice’ includes students of biomedical science and medicine, both books are too elementary to be of value to laboratory professionals. Both books cover aspects of haematology, immunology and biochemistry and aim to set the discussion of pathology in context by relating it to normal physiology. The scope of each is (deliberately) limited: for example, reproductive hormone measurements, tumour markers, drugs and poisons are not included.
Both books include case reports with those in ‘Routine Blood Results Explained’ tending to be more complex and having more detailed explanations. The Preface to ‘Blood Results in Clinical Practice’ indicates that the book is also intended to be suitable as a resource for patients and their relatives – a topical subject at present. Analogy is often a useful tool in explaining medical matters to patients and this book includes a number, some of which have the added benefit of being amusing. Thus ‘Both T3 and T4 are usually transported [in the plasma] by chaperone proteins like albumin. They are like young girls from wealthy Victorian families, who could not travel without an elderly female companion. ‘Free’ T4 and T3 are like Victorian urchins from poor families. They are not bound to transporting proteins and are therefore biologically active.’
One possible group of readers that neither author considers are sixth-form school pupils who want to know something about blood sciences. Readers who get enquiries – for example in the course of open days or national pathology weeks – could do a lot worse than recommend these books to them, but they are unlikely to be of direct interest to laboratory professionals.