Description
In any radiology department worldwide, around 60–70% of investigations deal with surgical cases: trauma, tumors, pre- and postsurgical assessment, surgical follow-ups, and more. In spite of that, radiology has a lot to offer in the field of internal medicine in terms of establishing, confirming, or rejecting diagnoses, or favoring differential diagnoses.
Before I joined radiology, I worked as an internal physician for almost a year and almost another year and half as a general surgeon. This clinical experience leads me to look at radiological images with the eye of a radiologist and the mind of a clinician when I examine patient radiological images. I even take a history and do a clinical examination if I have the chance when the patient is in the ultrasound, CT, or MRI room. I have always believed that the radiologist’s role is not confi ned to writing reports, but it can be broadened to establish the diagnosis in the fi rst hand in the same way as the clinician do.
In the medical library, there are books dedicated to the clinical signs of internal medicine diseases; interestingly, there are no such books in the radiology library. Radiology books concentrate on the radiological signs according to the system involved, not according to the disease or the specialty. For example, looking for signs of multiple myeloma follows the bone marrow tumors in a musculoskeletal radiology book, not a radiological book that discusses diseases of hematology, for example, which is the main target and idea of this book.
This book is designed to put the radiologist in the internal physician’s shoes. It teaches radiologists how to think in terms of disease progression and complications, where to look for and to image these complications, and what are the best modalities used to reach a diagnosis. Also, the internal physicians can benefi t from this book by learning what help radiology can offer them in establishing a diagnosis. The book also helps internal physicians to think like radiologists, in terms of what investigation they should request to confi rm their diagnosis.
Each disease is mentioned with its pathophysiology, symptoms, clinical presentation, and how radiology can be used to establish the diagnosis or to look for the complications of this particular disease. Specialties covered in this book include gastroenterology, neurology, endocrinology, nephrology, cardiology, rheumatology, pulmonology, dermatology, hematology, diabetology, and tropical and infectious medicine.
The book works as a short textbook with an atlas of images. The book is not designed to serve as the only textbook for study. Doctors, or radiologists who are interested in more details about a certain disease, should refer to the standard medical or radiological textbooks.