Mattle H, Mumenthaler M. Fundamentals of Neurology: An Illustrated Guide. 2nd ed. Thieme; 2017; 456 pp; 567 ill; $79.99
Fundamentals of Neurology: An Illustrated Guide is an introductory textbook of clinical neurology. It provides a comprehensive overview of common neurologic and muscular disorders, with numerous supporting illustrations that serve to further clarify the content of this book. The intended audiences are medical students, residents, and practicing clinicians. Indeed, the textbook’s format, concise language, and straightforward illustrations will appeal to physicians of all training levels.
The textbook’s organization is easy to follow, starting from the first page where each chapter is listed and assigned a color that is used for the remainder of the book to designate the corresponding pages of the chapter. Furthermore, the material of each chapter is divided in a way that is easy to digest through the use of sections, which begin by summarizing the key points, and subsections, which have the important ideas highlighted. This approach allows the reader to use the textbook either for detailed studying or for a quick reference. Moreover, the tables, diagrams, and radiologic images are of high quality and are well annotated. In fact, if time is a limiting factor, the reader can still gain a strong understanding of the most important information by just reviewing the provided illustrations.
The textbook’s content primarily provides a clinical approach to understanding various neurologic disorders, with only a superficial focus on diagnostic radiology, especially when compared with more well-known textbooks written for the field of neuroradiology. While the initial chapters concentrate on techniques for obtaining a good patient history and physical exam, as well as ordering appropriate ancillary tests, the second half of the book discusses symptoms and common neurologic disorders in a way that neuroradiologists will also find relevant. For example, there is a chapter dedicated to correlating symptoms of neurologic deficits to their corresponding anatomic lesions. This knowledge will be useful to neuoradiologists because it will help them organize their search pattern and it will clarify the thought processes of clinicians who provide vague symptoms for indications when ordering plain films, CTs, and MRIs. The broad overview of common neurologic disorders that follows in the second half of the book will help neuroradiologists dictate more meaningful reports. For example, in addition to discussing the expected clinical features of disease processes, these chapters also describe treatment and prognosis. Having an understanding of management can guide neuroradiologists in becoming better at dictating the necessary information that will affect clinical decisions.
In summary, the concise yet comprehensive nature of this textbook makes it excellent for doctors who have different levels of training and experience. While this book is dedicated to the clinical understanding of neurology rather than an in-depth understanding of neuroradiology, I still recommend this book to neuroradiologists. Their practice and reports will benefit from increased knowledge of clinical neurology, which may provide them with better insight into the expectations of ordering clinicians and deepen their knowledge of various disease processes.
