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This addition to the Pre Test/ McGraw-Hill manuals of clinical medicine is designed to give medical students and house officers an overview of clinical nephrology. It is not meant to be an in-depth review of the field but is rather an "attempt to delineate rational approaches to the evaluation and management of common and important renal problems." The author has intentionally deferred any discussion of physiology or pathophysiology to more formal textbooks of nephrology.
The chapters are written in outline form and each topic is covered in terms of etiology, clinical presentation and course, differential diagnosis, laboratory findings, and treatment. Although the author appropriately includes a number of important topics in clinical nephrology, many of these are covered far too superficially; this is especially true of the chapters on fluid-electrolyte and acid-base disorders. As a result, it is necessary for the inquisitive reader to use the selected bibliography at the