Preface

In 2019, we penned the Preface for the 26th edition of Ganong’s Review of Medical Physiology. At that time, we scarcely could have imagined the life-changing experiences that would soon be upon us as the world plunged into the COVID-19 pandemic. Many academic projects became stalled or were abandoned as education moved online and research labs were shuttered, and some days it seemed impossible to even think of writing. Our plans to generate a new edition of this text were seriously impacted, and thus a longer than usual interval has elapsed before presenting our readers with this updated 27th edition. Nevertheless, as before, we hope the text is faithful to the original vision of Dr. Fran Ganong, who made it his life’s work to reveal the beauty and logic of the body’s systems, particularly as they pertain to normal function as well as the pathogenesis of human disease.

Indeed, the pandemic taught us many lessons about the critical place that physiological knowledge continues to hold in underpinning clinical practice, and in untangling the underlying mechanisms of hitherto unknown yet deadly diseases. Clinicians on the front lines turned to physiologists to understand, for example, the most effective approaches to treating the respiratory symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection and increasingly to explain the mechanisms that may underlie the multisystem postacute sequelae of COVID-19, popularly known as Long COVID. These reminders inspired us to redouble our efforts to ensure that the physiological knowledge in these pages is linked, wherever possible, to its medical application. Thus, in addition to updating the overall content and ensuring that therapeutic information, for example, reflects contemporary medical practice, this edition of Ganong contains new pedagogical features known as Clinical Concept Checks. These vignettes, added to every chapter, invite the students to apply their physiological insights to a narrative clinical scenario to check and reinforce understanding. Together with substantive updates to the illustrations contained in the volume, we hope to have rendered the text even more useful to those who are studying physiology with an end goal of clinical practice.

Continuing from the 26th edition, our author team remains intact and committed to a process of continuous improvement to keep pace with the ever-expanding increase in the body of physiological knowledge. We are pleased with our efforts in this edition, but know there is always more work to do. In this regard, we are always grateful to the many students and instructors worldwide who take the trouble to write to us to point out segments of the text that are unclear, inconsistent, or potentially confusing. It is inevitable in a project of this scope that some frank errors can creep in, but we do everything we can to ensure that these are minimized. We appreciate the help of our readers in identifying problem areas, and indeed in making overall suggestions for improvements or missing topics. We thank you in advance for your critical feedback, and of course for your support of this new edition.

This edition is a revision of the original works of Dr. Francis Ganong.