Essentials of Pathophysiology for Pharmacy PDF

Preface

This book was written as a clear, concise learning instrument for students in pharmacy or sciences. Many of the large pathophysiology textbooks used today are very detailed works that often include chapters on normal physiology and function, topics that are redundant for pharmacy or health science students who will take separate courses in human physiology as part of their curriculum.

The book begins with an overview of tissue injury and mechanisms of tissue repair to provide students with a foundation of key concepts in injury and repair that appear throughout subsequent chapters. A detailed discussion of the immune system is also included early on because this system plays a key role in a number of important disease processes. The discussion of the immune system is followed by an up-to-date discussion of HIV that includes important information regarding HIV mutation and drug resistance.

The book continues with a detailed presentation of diseases affecting the main organ systems including cardiovascular, respiratory, renal, gastrointestinal, hepatic and endocrine disorders. The book concludes with a comprehensive look at diabetes mellitus.

The presentation of material within the chapters is designed to maximize clarity and facilitate conveyance of key points to the students. Subsections, bulleted lists, tables and definitions of key terms are included in each chapter along with study objectives that are designed to focus students on important concepts within each chapter. Each chapter includes a rationale for drug therapy section that allows students to correlate information they have learned on selected diseases to the clinical application of drugs. The author's experience in teaching both pathophysiology and pharmacology has made it clear that the time to introduce pharmacy and health science students to therapeutics is with the study of pathophysiology, where the mechanism and effects of disease are explored in detail. The presentation of drug therapy in this book is general and in most cases does not focus on the uses of specific drugs within a class but rather on a class of drugs as a whole. The goal of the drug therapy section is to expose students to various drug classes with emphasis on how these drug classes are used to treat a specific disease state. Major side effects of these drug classes are also included. However, specific drug nomenclature and dosing are not included, nor are detailed mechanisms of drug action because these topics will be covered in detail in subsequent pharmacology and therapeutics classes.

Although this book was designed as a stand-alone text for a pathophysiology course in a pharmacy or health sciences program, it may also be useful as a clear and concise supplement to some of the larger, more comprehensive textbooks that are currently available. This book may also serve as an excellent review of pathophysiology for students preparing for standardized exams or for anyone who needs to update his or her knowledge in this area.