Understanding Neurology: A Problem-Oriented Approach PDF

Preface

While traditional neurology textbooks tend to be organized by disease process, patients, being unaware of this, arrive with a complaint, (e.g. headache, dizziness, memory problems), that requires an explanation. This multi-author book adopts a problem-oriented approach to the commonly presenting complaints seen by neurologists. We have drawn on the experience of practising clinicians in a busy department based in the Southern General Hospital, Glasgow.

The problem-based approach illustrates the manner in which clinicians, in the real world, focus on particular elements of history and examination in order to narrow down their differential diagnosis and by so doing formulate a diagnostic approach or sometimes (quite often actually) offer no more than confident professional reassurance.

This is not a comprehensive textbook of these neurological conditions in themselves, nor a manual of neuro-therapeutics. Neurology is a speciality requiring a ‘good listener' and a capable examiner, no more and no less.

We hope that this book will demystify what should have never been mysterious in the first place and prove useful to medical undergraduates. It should also be of benefit to junior doctors preparing for MRCP. If trainee neurologists also derive benefit from reading it, so much the better!