The Right Test: A Physician's Guide to Laboratory Medicine

Abstract

This small text fits neatly into the pocket of a lab coat or suit coat and seems to be designed for everyday use rather than as a library book. There is a table of reference ranges for common laboratory tests on the inside covers. In the introduction, Dr Speicher refers to his 1983Choosing Effective Laboratory Tests, which devotes about 100 pages to the problem-solving approach to medicine. His current work also uses that approach. The book has 10 chapters, which generally correspond to what were called clinical subproblems in the earlier text. The organization scheme for all chapters is spelled out in the introduction. There are a list of which tests to choose, explanations of how to evaluate the tests, how to interpret positive and negative test results, and how to monitor the patient's disorder, additional abnormal test results, and references. The chapters' titles are Screening, General and Miscellaneous