Vascular CT Angiography Manual

I picked this up used about a year back and found it helpful (as a general radiologist). Mostly used to refresh my memory on anatomy and a reminder on various common pitfalls. Not exhaustive by any means, but concise and portable. Unfortunately too portable because it disappeared and now I’m searching for another copy (but prices are pretty high so I’m waiting...)

Its an ok book but I think it's way to much as far as price goes. There are other books out there that are much less expensive and just as good if not better.

My section members and I reviewed several books before choosing this manual by Drs. Pelberg and Mazur to add to the required reading for our radiology residents and cardiology fellows (The other text being Cardiac Imaging: The Requisites) during their cross-sectional cardiovascular rotation. This manual is written in an easy comprehensible style. The first two chapters provide an overview of CT technology, image optimization and postprocessing, and CT radiation safety. There is a chapter devoted protocols which is very helpful, especially when doing seldom performed exams, such as upper extremity venography. There is enough discussion of common vascular pathology to prepare the residents for their boards. Most importantly however, is that in reading this manual the residents and fellows learn how to write detailed and pertinent reports that are actually useful to our vascular and cardiothoracic surgeons. The discussion of aortic aneurysms and EVAR is particularly useful. The references, rather than being esoteric, are selected to be the best for each topic, without regard as to whether they were published in the radiology, cardiology, or surgical literature. The one drawback is that its sole focus is CT. However, since nephrogenic systemic fibrosis has become a clinical concern, our referrals for MRA for non cardiac vascular imaging have all but vanished. Consequently, we are focusing our clinical and teaching efforts on CT, so perhaps the focus of the manual is more appropriate than one would initially think. Finally, it is great to be able to recommend a book to the residents and fellows that is affordable enough for them to purchase so they don't have to fight over the library copy. Although it is not exhaustive, I have also recommended this book to a friend in private practice who wanted to kick start his vascular practice. It's a great starting point.

small book with small pictures.

Good place for registrar/residents to start. However the images in a radiology book are utterly terrible. Even the kindle version has such poor resolution. I had to cross reference the articles he took the images from, and then download it from the respective websites as the original copy had a greater resolution. I don't get why the publishers don't get their act together as it is a simple solution to just re-edit the images.

I thought I'd use this book as a desktop reference but I haven't. My copy took forever to arrive from Amazon, the reason being it was printed by Amazon, it says so on the back page. The quality of the paper is poor, it is not glossy and as a result the colour and greyscale radiological images render very poorly. Certainly not worth the >£40 I spent on it. If you want the content, best to get the kindle edition.