Netter. Atlas of Human Anatomy

[Guest Ian Wong]

Atlas of Human Anatomy, 2nd Ed. Netter, F. H. 1998. Novartis. East Hanover, New Jersey.

 

ISBN: 0-914168-81-9

Chapters/Indigo.ca price: $98.95

Pages: 525 (each Plate is one page)

 

The Netter Atlas is a completely hand-drawn collection of plates by Frank Netter, MD, and is easily the most popular North American anatomy atlas. I truly believe that it would be impossible for you to go through medical school without encountering this textbook, affectionately named "Netter's" either through your own studies, or that of your classmates and colleagues.

 

Netter's is a complete work, covering all parts of the human body, many from angles that are extremely difficult to expose through dissection of a cadaver. As it is hand-drawn and coloured, there has been artistic license taken by drawing all arteries as red, veins as blue, and nerves as yellow, and this vastly increases the traceability of the course and branches of a particular vessel. If you are trying to figure out where a given vessel/nerve travels, you will find it easiest to consult with Netter's before attempting to find it either on a cadaver, or in a cadaver photograph-based anatomy atlas.

 

Furthermore, there are many areas of the body where a hand-drawn picture is superior in legibility and readability compared with a photographic image due to the extreme anatomic complexity or inaccessibility to dissection of a body part eg. cranial nerves, middle ear, brachial and lumbo-sacral plexi, showing origins and insertions of muscles, etc.

 

Hand-drawn images also allow for the colour representation of clinically-important facts such as the areas of sensation innervated by a given nerve. For example, on Plate/Page 441, a reader can easily determine the area of skin innervated by the median nerve, and therefore help rule in a diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome (which compresses the median nerve) if there is numbness/tingling along the palm of the hand and index and middle fingers.

 

The disadvantage of this atlas is that there is no associated textbook. An atlas, by definition, is a book with mainly pictures, and little to no descriptive text. The Netter atlas only contains pictures and diagrams, and little to no supplemental text or figure captions. Therefore, one often needs to refer to a separate textbook for other details such as: what spinal levels are included in each nerve, from which artery did this artery originate, etc. For this, many of my classmates use the Moore textbook.

 

Unfortunately, anatomy language is not completely standardized, and you many therefore find that different textbooks may describe a given structure using slightly different nomenclature, leading to some confusion. You may even find this variation of using more traditional Latin terms, versus more Westernized terms among your anatomy professors, depending on the time and location of their training!

 

Despite that, the Netter Atlas is a highly readable book which is an excellent reference both before, and during your gross anatomy sessions. In general, to really get good use out of your Anatomy textbooks, you should strive to have at least one atlas and one textbook. Many of my classmates, including myself, have multiple atlases and textbooks. Either way, Netters is a good place to start, and is a book that you'll have no trouble re-selling later on. You really should own either this book or Rohen/Yokochi as either one of these atlases will be extremely useful in medical school.

[medinfofree]

great review of the 2nd edition of netter atlas but my favourite one is the latest sixth edition which has many features like:

• Surpassing fifth version, this book became the most sold atlas all around the global.
• This state-of-the-art edition of the atlas has the contemporary studies as accomplished by the yr 2014 and is a actual present for the readers.
• As opposed to looking all of the movies which can be to be had for the atlas, you can examine this book thoroughly and apprehend the topic higher.
• This book also has a pdf model to examine it inside the gentle form which you may be able to down load at the stop of this assessment.
• Diagrams are in three-D and labelled a good way to assist you in the extremely good information of the concept you will examine in the e-book.

Not only these but there many other features as well. I have written a detailed review along with features that you can see here: Netter atlas 6th edition review.