Synopsis

Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects, by Drs. Keith L. Moore, T.V.N. Persaud, and Mark G. Torchia, allows you to efficiently and quickly assimilate the most important concepts related to this subject. Concise and richly illustrated, this popular book delivers the embryology knowledge you need in a highly efficient, reader-friendly manner. You can also access the complete contents online at www.studentconsult.com, along with 17 remarkable animations, downloadable illustrations, additional review questions and answers, and more.

• Access the full contents of the book online at www.studentconsult.com - as well as 17 remarkable animations that bring normal and abnormal embryological development to life, downloadable images, and hundreds of additional review questions and answers to test your mastery of the material.
• Focus on the most need-to-know information with coverage masterfully distilled from The Developing Human, 8th Edition - the more comprehensive and in-depth embryology textbook by Drs. Moore, Persaud, and Torchia.
• Study efficiently and flexibly thanks to the book’s user-friendly full-color format and portable size.
• Effectively prepare for exams with review questions and answers at the end of each chapter.

• Understand all of the latest advances in embryology, including normal and abnormal embryogenesis, causes of birth defects, and the role of genes in human development.
• See how discoveries in molecular biology have affected clinical practice, including the development of sophisticated new techniques such as recumbent DNA technology and stem cell manipulation.
• Prepare for the USMLE Step 1 with clinical case presentations, highlighted in special boxes, that demonstrate how embryology concepts relate to clinical practice.

Michael F. Dauzvardis

The fifth edition of this book represents a somewhat abbreviated form of the parent text, The Developing Human. The primary goal is to present the essentials of human embryology and teratology in a format useful for students of medicine and associated health services. The authors meet this goal by artfully coordinating lucid color drawings, photographs, MRIs, and clinical correlations with clear, concise prose. The authors, both highly regarded professors of anatomy, target an audience consisting primarily of medical students, although undergraduate biology and nursing students and expectant parents could benefit from this work as well. The focus is on the miracle of human development from gametogenesis to birth. Special attention is placed on the first eight weeks of development, with the majority of chapters zeroing in on a given organ system. By far, the book's greatest strength is its color illustrations. These ""three dimensional"" drawings are quite successful in depicting migration and growth of various embryologic primordia. MRIs, ultrasounds, and scanning electron micrographs complement these drawings. For years Langmans Medical Embryology has been the tool of choice for many medical embryology course directors, but perhaps these faculty would be well advised to peruse this publication. There really exists little comparison in the quality of images, tables, and overall layout of the two texts. However, this book is far superior in using graphics to convey a conceptually difficult topic to the reader.