Crack the Core Exam

A must-have for radiology residents! This is truly a one-stop, comprehensive body of work that does justice to a 5-star rating. As impossible as it sounds, EVERY section in the series (volume I and volume II) is incredibly good. I thought to myself, "How can this one author possibly provide an excellent mammo section" or "Really, is the physics section going to be good?". YES. OH WOW YES. The ~150 page physics section is better than many dedicated physics textbooks that are out there. I would put this up there with "Top 3 Differentials in Radiology" and the IMAIOS Qevlar question bank in terms of how practical, well written, and indispensable this text is. What makes it so effective is that the author totally cuts all the BS and gives it to you like it is. I found it to be well written and concise, nothing overly wordy. This translates into a very readable experience that you can easily get through. The diagrams and figures are TOP NOTCH. The parts where the author offers more detailed explanations (quite often I assure you) are superb. I have never encountered such a sensible, concise, and easy to understand approach to congenital heart disease. The insights on liver disease is amazing. The approach to small bowel pathology on fluoro studies is excellent. I couldn't be happier with this purchase and with spending my time reading this. I am definitely pleased to see a second edition is coming out, hopefully with correction of a few scattered errata in the textbook. There are also typos and grammatical mistakes here and there, but only very rarely did I encounter a factual mistake. When the 2nd edition comes out, I strongly encourage you to give it a try.

This is the best single book available to study for the ABR Core Exam. There are simply no other comprehensive study guides in print for the Core Exam, so buying this is a no-brainer. Other people have used Core Radiology by Mandell and Primer of Diagnostic Imaging (which are good), but these predate the ABR Core Exam and do not contain any strategy/gamesmanship for the exam. I think it is remarkable that one individual published the entire book (and under a pen name at that). Bravo! I read through it slowly once over a 2 month period after going to AIRP in February, and then rapidly over 2 week period before the exam in June. It is likely not possible to read this book as a first or second year resident and get much out of it, because it is by nature a high-level REVIEW book, and is not intended to introduce concepts to you, but rather clarify/review them for the purposes of passing the Core Exam (Core Radiology by Mandell probably serves this purpose better). While reading the book, I had my computer next to me and would frequently look up example images to help things stick. You can cover a lot of ground in a short period of time. For example, you can read the 60 page PEDS section in 3 hours and probably pass the PEDS section (with some experience). The physics section is quite good, actually, and can replace HUDAs book. I studied for physics using the RSNA modules, going to HUDA's course, and reading the physics section in this book, and that was PLENTY. The highest yield physics resource (besides doing the RSNA modules, which is probably mandatory) is going to HUDA's course - he really understands boards prep. While I enjoyed the book and it is a relatively fast read, one annoyance I have is that the author overuses the phrase "high-yield". However, it is hard to say what is high-yield when you are testing all of radiology in 600+ questions. I really liked going through his strategy section as a last day comprehensive review. It is unfortunately not the only resource you will need to study for the test, however. You will have to do practice questions/cases to reinforce material and see images. Keep in mind that 15-30% of any given section will be Physics/Quality and Safety. His Quality and Safety review is not sufficient for the exam, and you really should read the ABR document. Dr. David Stevens from Stanford posted some lectures on Youtube going through the document which I found incredibly helpful. The other recommended resources I used to supplement (more than necessary, but I had time to study): RadPrimer (I did not do neuro or MSK because the massive amount of questions in those sections, with no consequence), QEVLAR, A Core Review Question books (MSK, GU, Breast), Breast Case Review, a few RadCases books (Nukes, IR, Neuro), Thomas Popes Aunt Minnie book (interesting but likely unnecessary), and the Crack the Core Case book. Near the end of your studying you will be able to blitz through a case book in 1-2 days. I don't list all of those to freak you out, only to give some suggested resources. What you choose to study will depend highly on your own training, interests, and time given to you by your program. Best wishes to all of those entering boards prep!

First the good. I liked the style of this book. Easy to read vernacular and colloquialisms. It's like having a classmate explain things to you in a way that you can easily understand. And it seems to cover all of the topics that are fair game on the core. So it's definitely worth a read. The bad -- (1) it strongly relies on "buzz words", especially the "gamesmanship" chapter; I don't know if the author appreciates that the test is very different from the USMLE or "writtens" and is "image rich" and not going to ever give you a descriptive sentence full of buzz words to run with. instead they will show you the picture. So it doesn't help if you associate "punched out lytic lesion" with gout -- you need to get there from looking at a radiograph of gout. As such this book would benefit from significnt addition of images. Or you need to use it in conjunction with the Internet and look up images as you read along (which makes it a much less quick read). (2) this book needs an editor, badly. Clearly the author was in a rush to get it out in time for the next offering of the core, but there's a typo or grammatical error on virtually every page. And the author apparently doesn't know the differences between the word "effect" and "affect" -- he pretty consistently uses the wrong one, which is a bit distracting. So basically this is a very nice first draft, but hopefully there will be a cleaned up, more "image rich" second edition on the horizon.

This review is for the second edition. A newer edition is coming out later this summer. I found out I had passed the core exam today, so I can leave a "tried-and-true" review. I highly recommend using this book as a study guide for your core studies. This book is concise and to the point. It assumes that you have been exposed to all the topics they are covering. If there is a topic you don't understand or have not seen before, look it up! Almost all the topics they cover are high yield. There are very few topics that are missing and very few topics where they give you too much information. It is definitely worth the money and your time.

If you are currently cramming for the Core Radiology exam, stop what you are doing RIGHT NOW and buy both volumes of this book. By far, the most comprehensive, understandable, hilarious, high yield study resource out there. I finished all the RadPrimer questions, I read Core Radiology twice, and I wish I hadn't wasted my time with those. I wish I had simply been reading this book. The High yield topics, "This vs That", Gamesmanship tips, and Trivia are spectacular. Physics Chapter basically replaces Huda since it is so understandable. This is the first time I have ever even understood Cirrhosis constellations. I cannot recommend this book enough.

I started to read this book and thought it was great until I realized that the author had basically copied and pasted this entire book from other sources including Radiographics articles and old ACR inservice exams- some sections are word for word. This is plagiarism. Although high yield material, I'm very disappointed.

As another review stated, most of this info is copied directly from Radiopaedia. With that said, it is still a comprehensive book for studying for the CORE with good information. This Prometheus guy does provide some diagrams that are helpful (others not so much). What this book does is distill the massive amount of info into two volumes. Just know that you will find the exact same description on Radiopaedia (for example, look up the carpal dislocation stages on Radiopaedia and compare it to the book section MSK-3).

This book (2nd edition) is as close to First Aid for the CORE exam that we have at this point in time. Get this book early! I wish I had it earlier in my third year. Yes it is skimpy on pictures and there are a few errors, but the bottomline is that it helped me PASS the core!