Labruzzo SV, Loevner LA, Saraf-Lavi E, Yousem DM. Neuroradiology Imaging: Case Review Series. 1st ed. Elsevier; 2016; 416 pp; 530 ill; $69.99
Most radiologists love case-based books and for good reason. One gets to see and analyze images which might infrequently or rarely be seen in the course of a year’s practice. Further, it is an enjoyable way of challenging the depths of one’s knowledge.
Enter a new book (publication date 2017) entitled Neuroradiology Imaging: Case Review Series, written by Drs. Labruzzo and Yousem from John Hopkins, Dr. Loevner from the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Saraf-Lavi from the University of Miami. They have collected important and instructive cases encompassing material related to the brain, spine, and head/neck. In a familiar fashion, a case is presented with a few images and a brief history. Four questions follow (which often give away the diagnosis), and the over page features the answers to each question with an explanation and half page of comments related to the case. There are 200 cases mixed between brain/spine/H&N and bunched into categories which the authors consider relatively easy to more difficult. Under the answers to each question, the images shown on the prior page are repeated, albeit in a smaller format. Here the authors missed an opportunity to label the key findings, presuming that the findings were so obvious they did not have to be labeled. That may be true for most cases, but not for all. Take one example: the case of a TMJ with displacement of a disc without recapture. Here labeling the displaced disc would have been beneficial to those who do not have TMJ MR experience, as would labeling of inner ear abnormalities in Down syndrome. There are other examples where labeling the smaller images would have been worthwhile.
The comments above notwithstanding, the choice of cases is excellent and the brief discussions/comments are succinct and, in general, adequate in conveying the major message of the case. One could go as far as to say that the comments are “meaty.”
A general comment, which is not aimed at this book in particular, is the fact that often the most meaningful issue in radiology is finding or identifying a lesion rather than coming up with differential diagnoses. This is the daily challenge when presented with a large number of images in a single patient where a finding may be subtle and may be seen on just one or a couple of images. Going through the images in this book, the findings are obvious, but the value of this, of course, as with other similar books is to describe what diagnoses (or single diagnosis) are to be offered.
In reviewing this book, this reviewer evaluated the most challenging cases first and they (54 cases) along with the 4 questions were in many instances “challenging” (like the case of chondrodysplasia punctate) when taken on as unknowns. The findings throughout this section were shown well, but in a number of cases the exact diagnosis and the answers to the questions were not obvious. This made the exercise worthwhile, not only in these 54 cases but in other cases earlier in the book where more commonly encountered case material was presented.
This case review book can be recommended for any neuroradiology library and should be assigned reading for residents and new fellows.
