Budson AE, Solomon PR.  Memory Loss:  A Practical Guide for Clinicians.  Elsevier Saunders 2011, 320 pages, $52.95.

For those working in a hospital or academic medical center where there is a large Department of Neurology which deals with a significant volume of patients undergoing a work up for dementia, this book could serve as a proper companion to the recently reviewed book Neuroimaging in Dementia.

This softcover 320-page book is written entirely by Drs. Budson and Solomon is divided into 6 sections.  The book is aimed at the clinicians who deal with patients who may have disorders ranging all the way from mild cognitive impairment to severe dementia of various types. There are adequate routine images of many of the disorders, but these, of course, would not be of great benefit to our readership. Rather, it is the clarity and ease of reading of the clinical manifestations, laboratory studies, and treatments which would be of most interest to us. Take the chapter (chapter 7) on frontotemporal dementia as one example. Here the first two pages contain in bullet like format a summary of what follows—i.e. definition of FTD, prevalence of the disease, genetics, cognitive/behavior changes, the criteria used to make the diagnosis, treatment strategies, and a differential diagnosis. In the chapter we see gross and histologic pathology, and a SPECT scan. A similar format is present in the other chapters. A companion with Alzheimer’s disease points out the differences between the two.

An interesting last chapter is entitled Case Studies (11 patients), but the imaging is limited and not particularly helpful in these cases.