Diagnostic Neuroradiology

One need go no further than this 1288-page book, Diagnostic Neuroradiology, to realize that high-quality neuroradiology is practiced in major medical centers throughout the world. The authors, Drs Valery Kornienko and Igor Pronin, both from the Neuroimaging Department of the Burdenko Neurosurgical Institute in Moscow, in collaboration with 9 of their colleagues from the same department, have written a heavily and beautifully illustrated (1905 separate figures, many with multiple parts) text. The emphasis here is on showing multiple classic and clinically germane cases while still retaining a proper amount of narrative material.

There are 15 chapters along the lines one would expect in such a book: “Neuroradiology: History and New Research Technologies,” “Congenital Malformations of the Brain and Skull,” “Cerebrovascular Disease and Malformations of the Brain,” “Supratentorial Tumours,” “Pineal Region Tumours,” “Sella and Parasellar Tumours,” “Infratentorial Tumours,” “Tumours of the Meninges,” “Head Trauma,” “Hydrocephalus,” “Intracranial Infections,” “Toxic and Metabolic Disorders,” “Demyelinating Diseases of the Central Nervous System,” “Neurodegenerative Disorders of the Central Nervous System,” and “Spine and Spinal Cord Disorders.” This book on neuroradiology is not alone in its omission of head and neck radiology. Neuroradiologists in general consider head and neck imaging to be part of their subspecialty, but this is often missing in most textbooks on neuroradiology. The presumption is that this would have required a 2-volume text—in any event, a subtitle should have indicated that this is dealing with just the brain and spine.

An incomplete index does the book an injustice; this is a profound weakness in an otherwise good book. For instance, searching the index to find information and illustrations on “Wernicke encephalopathy,” one finds no such listing. It was difficult for this reviewer to believe that it would not have been included; but it is there in the chapter “Toxic and Metabolic Disorders” (but, surprisingly, there are no illustrations). In fact the index is ridiculously short (only 4 pages) for a book this size—as an example, only 2 entries are shown under R (“radiation” and “rhabdomyosarcoma”). Anyone reading this review could easily and quickly come up with a half-dozen key neuroradiology diagnoses beginning with R. After all, in most textbooks like this if you want some information on a particular disease, you use the index. If you go to the index here, you may very well not find what you are looking for.

I was struck by a few other things about the book. There is a section on “Carbon Dioxide [sic] Poisoning,” and this is repeated in the legend for Fig 12.14 and in the first sentence in the section—obviously, all of these were meant to say “carbon monoxide.” Mistakes like that startle the reader, wondering how such errors got through to the final product. One test of a book is to see if there are descriptions of not infrequently encountered disorders or diseases. One would think “limbic encephalitis” would be described and shown, but it was not (of course) in the index under either “limbic” or “encephalitis” or “para neoplastic.” Likewise, it is not mentioned as a differential in the section in which “herpes encephalitis” is described. Then I tried to find information on “spontaneous intracranial hypotension”: This important diagnosis is also missing. I presume that one could pick through any textbook and find room for criticism, but these issues, as examples, stood out.

On the other hand, the images shown are of high quality, and the first chapter is an excellent review of the major new techniques in neuroradiology. A 2-page history of the contribution of Russian physicians and scientists to the growth of neuroradiology in that country sheds light on what has transpired there, particularly at the Moscow Institute of Neurosurgery (currently named the Burdenko Neurosurgical Institute).

Any potential purchaser of this book should go through the entire set of images as an excellent review of most aspects of neuroradiology, stopping to read the descriptive material when clarification or amplification is needed.

• Copyright © American Society of Neuroradiology