This an important book because it attempts to answer the most perplexing questions which face any large spine service.

The book is edited by two orthopedic spine surgeons (Drs. Vaccaro and Eck) and contains contributions from a total of 61 authors, who are primarily orthopedic or neurological surgeons.  The first chapter appropriately describes the meaning of the measures for evidence based medicine (EBM).  The authors describe the 5 steps in EBM evaluation starting with what is the question to be answered or addressed.  The authors go on to define levels I-V evidence.  This scale allows investigators to communicate and discuss what and how rigorous are the studies which involve either therapeutic, prognostic (disease outcome), prognostic (diagnostic test efficacy), or economic/decision analysis.  Finally, we are shown the levels (1A-2C) of recommendation for any given study.

With that material behind us, the authors tackle 10 questions involving spinal trauma, 10 questions involving degenerative disease of the cervical and thorocolumbar spine, 6 questions involving the use of devices and new technology and 3 questions involving spine infections.  This reviewer is certain that most, if not all of these questions have been discussed in combined spine surgery and radiology conferences in virtually every academic medical center.

Each issue is posed, diagnostic criteria described, treatments discussed and then different Levels of Evidence data is presented.  Admixed in the chapters are Tables, images (CT/MR/radiographs), flow charts (algorithms), consensus statements, “pearls,” conclusions, and references.

Great discussions and evidence for various options abound.  Here are some examples:  For recurrent HNP what is best – repeat discectomy or fusion; for back pain – ALIF or PLIF or TLIF; for cervical myelopathy – anterior or posterior approach; for compression fractures – kyphoplasty or vertebroplasty.  These are just 4 of the 29 questions posed.

This is exactly the book one should have ready access to since decisions in the clinical area are most often made on the basis of “experience” or “war stories,” not on evidence.  Here is a way to work through many of these vexing problems.

Neuropsychiatric Disorders
Koho Miyoshi, Yasushi Morimura, Kiyoshi Maeda (Editors)
Springer 2010, 368 pages, 39 illustrations, $219.00

Nuclear medicine, once considered somewhat removed from the daily practice of Neuroradiology, has entered our lives, particularly (but not exclusively) in the area of head and neck radiology.

The recently published book PET-CT Hybrid Imaging written by Drs. Schober and Heindel with contributions from 31 other authors (the majority of whom are from Munster Hospital in Germany), takes the reader from the Basic Principals to Imaging of Neoplastic Diseases to Imaging of Inflammatory, Cardiovascular and Neurodegenerative Diseases.  The book ends with an Appendix with useful websites for PET imaging along with limited glossary of terms (this is actually less useful than the 5-page listing of abbreviations found in the front of the book).  To this reviewer, the book gave the opportunity to review fundamentals of PET imaging and to review the benefit of PET/CT imaging in head and neck tumors as well as to understand some of the problems inherent in imaging this area.

The book will be useful for the entire Department.  While a neuroradiologist would not necessarily purchase this book, it would be one to recommend to a Departmental library so it could serve as a ready reference.

This small 109-page soft cover monograph is mainly intended for clinicians who deal with movement disorders. It covers Parkinson’s Disease (25% of the book), Parkinson Syndromes (MSA, PSP, Lewy Body dementia, CBD, and other Parkinson producing diseases), Dystonia, Essential Tremor, Restless Leg Syndrome, and other movement disorders such as Tourettes’s Syndrome, Chorea, Ballismus, Myoclonus and the like. Imaging is present, however, it is not a central focus of this monograph; rather, the authors primarily discuss issues such as pathophysiology, treatment, and neurologic findings. This is a nice summary of the field for those who have a particular interest in movement disorders.

This pocket-sized, soft cover, 428-page color atlas is designed as a review of the anatomy, development, neurophysiology, and functional anatomy of the central and peripheral nervous system. The descriptions of each of these areas are succinct and beautifully illustrated with color diagrams and pictures (there are no CT or MR images). The authors have wisely positioned the color diagrams on right hand pages and written material on the left hand pages, making cross referencing simple. This correlative information between function and anatomy is excellent and can serve as a strong review of functional neuroanatomy.

Although this clearly is not a neuroradiology textbook, it is nonetheless fascinating.

The author of this 500-page hardcover book, Dr. Jan Dirk Blom, has compiled innumerable short vignettes related to a host of different medical terms, biographical sketches, physiological phenomena, psychological disorders, geophysical observations, and the like, most of which seem to have had their origin from imaginings, frank hallucination, dreams, or the disclosures of mysterious “facts.” The list of described features is amazing — who was Charles Dogeon, how to explain the moon illusion (or superillusion) or Charpentier’s illusion, the meaning of CRPS (complex regional pain syndrome), the description of the first case of Alzheimer ’s disease involving auditory hallucinations, etc, etc. These phenomena/hallucinations/illusions are listed alphabetically, and they number in the hundreds, many with accompanying pictures.

Convince your library to buy a copy, check it out, and then spend and enjoyable evening thumbing through these stories, histories, and explanations.

This Pocket Atlas of 400 pages is a reference for radiology technologists relative to basic anatomic structures on plain radiographs, GI flouro, arthrography, arteriography venography, myelography, and bronchography. It is not intended, nor is it suitable for, radiologists or radiology residents. It features side-by side radiographs and corresponding line drawings adequately labelled.

This 416-page hardcover book is a compilation of case material, basically called “case vignette” and comes with the capability of searching the full text online. Each case serves as a backdrop for discussing the particular entity in question. It is supplemented by further illustrations of other case material. The categories (each a different chapter) are: Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Damage; Clinical-Anatomical Syndrome of Ischemic Infarction, Acute Stroke Imaging, Cardiac Embolism, Extracranial Large Artery Atherothrombosis, Intracranial Atherosclerotic Disease, Small Vessel Disease, Uncommon Causes of Stroke, Spinal Cord Infarction, Spontaneous Intraparenchymal Hemorrhage, Secondary Intraparenchymal Hemorrhages, Subarchmoid Hemorrhage, Vascular Anomalies of the Brain, Cerebral Venous Thrombosis.

All of these chapters should be of interest to the neurologist and neuroradiologist particularly so related to the one on Acute Stroke Imaging. Here the radiologist would be most interested in the protocols used for CT perfusion and the imaging, whether it is CT and/or MR based. Further, in this chapter there are 3 basic subsections: Computed Tomography; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Imaging in Stroke Emergencies. Each has a number of case history vignettes which bring to reality the imaging which follows. The material reviews concepts are well known to neuroradiologist (e.g. insular ribbon sign, dense MCA, sulcal effacement, contraindications for thrombolysis, Alberta Stroke Program early CT Scores vs. ELASS, evolution of stroke to subacute and chronic stages). The section on MR Angiography (½ page) is skimpy and gives few if any technical details, and many of the explanations could have been more detailed and forthcoming.

Built into a number of sections of this book are discussions of treatments — although not extensive, this adds value to this imaging text. One extra item that could have been added would have been a brief description of treatment in the legends for various cases shown.  No treatment for example was mentioned in the legend when there was a large penumbra in relation to virtually no alteration in the CBV on CT perfusion. Concerning MR little is said about the actual parameters used in DWI for example. Certainly a mention of various B values (and demonstration of such) in the setting of stroke would have been of value. All that said, this reviewer does recognize that the authors did not intend to write a text on stroke but rather primarily show case material. The chapter is on acute stroke accurate and valuable and to those with limited experience in stroke imaging.

The authors have chosen their images well, with most cases demonstrating high quality MRs and CTs. Additionally, solid explanations are offered for the findings seen on MR or CT such as the reason for the non-hemorrhagic hypertensities seen on T1WIs in cerebral hypoxia, timing of their appearance, the reason for areas of vulnerable cortex, the false subarachnoid hemorrhage sign, and the theorical reason for the delayed appearance of white matter abnormalities in anoxic/ hypoxia injuries.

The legends throughout are in the main complete, but one has to wonder, for example, why in a large MCA infarct where the authors show both the CT and MR, they fail to mention a hyper dense clot in the right MCA. It should be noted that throughout the text the authors deal with important issues and terminology in a straightforward and unambiguous manner such as when they are describing territorial infarcts and their vascular supplies. In the future, the authors should consider labeling arteries in the PA view of the MCA and ACA; they did include such labeling of the vertebral–basilar system but not of the MCA and ACA. Territorial involvement of infarcts involving various branches of the intracranial circulation are well and simply described, and much of this would have appeal to the neuroradiologist because of the identification of various symptoms and syndromes. Some but minimal editorial/publisher errors are noted, such as the vertical 180^º rotation of a vertebral angiogram and the corresponding CT, or poorly windowed CTs and MRs

A review of mechanisms involved in cardiac embolism (chapter 4) nicely puts together neuroimaging and cardiac pathology/physiology. This gives one the chance to briefly review issues with which we as radiologists seldom deal — like the EKG findings in atrial fibullation or the echocardiogram findings in ventricular thrombi. Again, the pleasant part of reading this is the combination of case vignettes and bullet learning points related to both the heart and brain.

Other chapters flow nicely and smoothly as one goes from extracranial vascular disease (nice combination of vascular US and extracranial vascular angiography — DSA/MRA) to intracranial vascular disease to small intracebral vessel disease. The rest of the material is mentioned in the first paragraph of this review.

This is a book well worth purchasing. It puts together in a readable and practical manner the issues faced in dealing with the imaging of stroke.

Restless Legs Syndrome
By Wayne A. Hening, MD, PhD, Richard Allen, PhD, Sudhansu Chokroverty, MD, FRCP, FACP and Christopher Earley, MD, PhD
Saunders Elsevier 2010, 336 pages, $103.00

Botulinum Toxin Therapeutic Clinical Practice & Science
By Joseph Jankovic, MD, Alberto Albanese, M. Zouhair Atassi, PhD, DSc, J. Oliver Dolly, Mark Hallett, MD and Nathaniel H. Mayer
Saunders Elsevier 2009, 512 pages, $103.00

Practical Approach to Electroencephalography
By Mark H. Libenson, MD
Saunders Elsevier 2010,464 pages, $99.00

Movement Disorders 4
Blue Books of Neurology Series, Volume 34
By Anthony H. V. Schapira, DSc, MD, FRCP, FMedSci, Anthony E. T. Lang and Stanley Fahn, MD
Saunders Elsevier 2010, 732 pages, $199.00

Muscle Pain: Understanding the Mechanisms
Siegfried Mense, Robert D. Gerwin, (Eds.)
Springer 2010, 323 pages, $199.00

Rodent Models of Stroke
Series: Neuromethods, Vol. 47
Dirnagl, Ulrich (Ed.)
Humana Press 2010, 285 pages, 98 illustrations, $119.00

In a very topical and important new 720-page text Clinical Neurotoxicology: Syndromes, Substances, Environments Michael R. Dobbs, the editor, and 65 contributors have catalogued, described, illustrated, and discussed a wide variety of substances which are toxic to the nervous system. In addition the authors devote the first 248 pages to an overview of neurotoxins, syndromes associated with neurotoxins, and the testing for neurotoxins.

The first thing one sees when opening the text are 15 pages of color plates with 2 to 4 color photographs on each page. These are referenced in the individual chapters, and they run the gamut from pertinent pictures of flowers, snakes, inhabitants of the sea, histopathology, and MR images among others.

There are 6 sections of the book: (1) Neurotoxic Overview, (2) Neurotoxic Syndromes — Symptomatic, Systems-Oriented approach in Clinical Neurotoxicology, (3) Neurotoxic Testing, (4) Neurotoxic substances (metals, drugs, organic, bacterial, animal, pesticides, plants, radiation cyanide, (5) Neurotoxic Environments and Conditions, (6) Neurological Weapons and Warfare (scary stuff in this section). Conceptualizing this book, gathering all the material, getting contributions from experts in each area, and synthesizing this into one complete and eminently readable book was brilliant.

One might ask-what could be the value of this book to a neuroradiologist? From a purely imaging standpoint — a reasonable amount. For example, in the chapters on toxic encephalopathies one is on cortical and mixed encephalopathies (no MR), the other on leukoencephalopathies, with some correlative MR images. The chapter on neuroimaging in neurotoxicology is short (10 pages) but does discuses and demonstrate major imaging findings. Imaging is not however the reason to consider the purchase of this book; rather it is the wealth of associated information on these diseases. This information would be difficult to obtain easily from other sources; it simply is an important and well conceived book. The chapters are punctuated by boxes containing vignettes of interest, excellent tabular information, case studies figures showing the mechanisms of neural injury, patient photographs, pictures of insects and more. There are so many sections of interest that the material can not be easily or simply summarized. I cannot imagine an entity not covered in this text.

In summary, this is an outstanding book; a masterful job. It is one of those books which by its title alone one would think it would have limited appeal, but actually the converse is true. It cuts across subspecialty areas and should be a book available (preferably purchased for one’s own library) to all neurologists, internists, ER physicians, epidemiologists, and even neuroradiologists.