Although needle biopsy of solid organs was introduced into clinical medicine nearly 40 years ago, the widespread use of renal biopsy for diagnostic purposes in individual patients, and to classify and analyze the clinicopathologic correlates of renal parenchymal disease, began in the early 1960s. Information derived from the examination of human tissue has accumulated rapidly, presenting the student of renal disease, as well as the nonnephrologist, with a complex nomenclature and often a bewildering array of clinically relevant facts.
This book, by Spargo, Seymour, and Ordón̄ez, is a scholarly and comprehensive treatise of renal histopathologic patterns of injury, and an attempt to synthesize this information. After a description of fixation and staining, and normal renal histology by light and electron microscopy, the first half of the text is devoted to an analysis of the major patterns of injury, while remaining sections deal with specific clinical entities. Each chapter provides information