Tsementzis, SA. Differential Diagnosis in Neurology and Neurosurgery: A Clinician’s Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition;Thieme 2019; 714 pp; 417 ill; $64.99.
A 714-page, pocket-sized, softcover book entitled Differential Diagnosis in Neurology and Neurosurgery encompasses major topics in neurology and neurosurgery. Written solely by Dr. Tsementzis, imaging, as would be expected, finds its way into many of the sections and chapters. A welcome addition to the book is a 76-page section on neuroradiology, but strangely, this covers only the brain. While there is spine imaging within chapters devoted to clinical spine problems, it would have seemed logical to have included spinal MR and CT examples in the neuroradiology area.
The effect of this omission, both in that section, and in the remainder of the book, is that important subjects for neurosurgeons and neurologists such as scoliosis, spine instability, or various syndromes related to degenerative disease of the spine, are either not covered or are sparsely mentioned. Neck and back pain are commonly studied, therefore more attention devoted to these problems would have made sense.
Of course in a handbook (or a “pocket guide,” as the authors prefer to call it) many items are absent, out of necessity for space and size of the book. Many absent diseases come to mind such as IIH, CSF leaks, syringomyelia (not illustrated), and more interestingly, when searching for syringomyelia in the index, one is incorrectly referred to page 492; where this is no mention of that entity. This shows that a substandard job was done in proofreading the text and in referring the reader to certain subjects or diseases. Another example is Creutzfedt-Jakob disease (CJD). The index points us to page 529, but that page deals with dystonies, and has no mention of CJD. One has to thumb through other sections to find CJD (where it is poorly described). Although there certainly is valuable, basic information packed into this book, its deficiencies (with the indexing being just one example) will frustrate the reader and cause one to wonder what other areas were not carefully dealt with. Guide books such as this are not read cover-to-cover; rather, one searches for a topic and then reads it. If this element of a guide book is poor, then it cannot be given a satisfactory rating.
On a sampling of written material, one comes across a sentence describing a “trigger finger,” but the reader is referred to an illustration of Dupuytron’s contractive. The book is replete with these types of gaffes. Even some of the legends in the neuroradiology section are suspect. For example, a described cystic acoustic schwannoma is said to show “extension through the internal auditory meatus.” By ‘extension through,’ the author implies involvement of the IAC—however, that is not shown. Much effort was put into writing this book, but until a newer edition is more carefully proofread, it is difficult to recommend this publication.
