Cotran. Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease

Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease, 6th Ed. Cotran, R. S., Kumar, V., Collins, T. 1999. W. B. Saunders Company. Toronto.

ISBN: 0-7216-7335-X
Chapters/Indigo.ca price: $120.00
Pages: 1425

Among my classmates, this book is considered the pathology bible. Although I didn't use this book much during Med 1 and 2, many of my classmates used it as a primary reference for their PBL research.

Robbins is an extremely well-laid out and efficiently presented textbook. Where relevant, you will find a multitude of colour slides, both of gross pathology and also histologic pathology. The book makes use of several informative tables and clear diagrams in outlining complicated events, such as blood coagulation and cancer development.

The book also has concise descriptions of the disease process, and avoids a large amount of wordiness and repetition. In many cases, you'll not only find a description of the evolution of a disease at a gross level, but you'll also get the molecular mechanism, which often helps you understand why the disease presented the way it did. Perhaps the only downside of this book is that you won't want to use it if you are quickly reviewing or cramming for an exam. You simply don't have the time to read all of the additional details presented in Robbins. Of course, for that type of reviewing, you should really be looking into a USMLE-type prep book that focusses on pathology, and not a comprehensive text like Robbins.

In summary, this is an excellent textbook, and well-worth its relatively high price. The reason I didn't used it very much had nothing to do with the quality of the textbook, but rather that using other clinical reference books combined with generally excellent Pathology lectures and labs at UBC made consulting Robbins less important. That, and the fact that I have no desire to become a pathologist!

However, this is an extremely popular textbook with my classmates, and for good reason. It's a comprehensive, well-organized, and yet presented in such a way that makes learning easy. I think this book contributes as much to med student education in Pathology as the Netter atlas does for Anatomy. A great book, and a good purchase. You won't have any trouble re-selling this book if you decide that you don't like it.