Heinrich Mattle - Fundamentals of Neurology: An Illustrated Guide

Illustration by Robert Wyss
(19252004)

Fundamentals of Neurology

An Illustrated Guide

2nd Revised and Updated Edition

Heinrich Mattle, MD
Professor of Neurology
Senior Consultant and formerly Vice-Chairman of the Department of Neurology
Head of the Neurological Policlinic and Stroke Center
Inselspital, University of Bern
Bern, Switzerland

Marco Mumenthaler, MD
Professor of Neurology
Formerly Chairman of the Department of Neurology
Inselspital, University of Bern
Bern, Switzerland

With assistance from the
Institute for Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology
Inselspital, University of Bern
Bern, Switzerland
Professor Jan Gralla, MD
Professor Gerhard Schroth, MD

Translated and adapted by Ethan Taub, MD

567 illustrations

Thieme
Stuttgart New York Delhi Rio de Janeiro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher.

This book is an authorized translation of the 4th German edition published and copyrighted 2015 by Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart. Title of the German edition: Kurzlehrbuch Neurologie

Translator: Ethan Taub, MD, Department of Neurosurgery, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Illustrators: Karin Baum, Paphos, Cyprus; Malgorzata and Piotr Gusta, Paris, France; and Helmut Holtermann, Dannenberg, Germany

2017 by Georg Thieme Verlag KG

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5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-3-13-136452-4

Also available as an e-book:
eISBN 978-3-13-202212-6

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The second edition of Fundamentals of Neurology by Mattle and Mumenthaler is an excellent introductory neurology textbook that covers a broad range of topics related to how to approach patients with neurologic and muscular disorders. The initial chapters describe how to interview, examine, and order/interpret appropriate testing for such patients and then how to use the information to localize where in the nervous system the likely abnormality is. Subsequent chapters cover in detail a broad range of commonly encountered neurologic and muscular diseases. Major strengths of the book include the straightforward and easily understood presentation of the material, the excellent numerous figures and tables, and the comprehensive discussion of a wide range of neurologic and muscular disorders.

Fundamentals of Neurology is an appropriate introductory neurology textbook for medical students, trainees in a variety of medical disciplines, including neurology, and physicians in practice who need an easily accessible source of information about neurologic and muscular disorders. I highly recommend it to all of these physicians and physicians in training, and predict that it will be frequently used by them as they encounter patients with neurologic and muscular disorders.

Just a few decades ago, neurology and the neurosciences in general were contemplative disciplines oriented toward clinical phenomena and their correlation with pathoanatomic findings. Definitive diagnosis and treatment were only rarely feasible. Today, clinicians and researchers can use newly developed technologies to detect a wide variety of diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system. With the advent of improved diagnostic methods, computer technology, microtechnology, and new, highly effective drugs, neurology is no longer merely contemplative and has become a highly dynamic field. Many symptomatic and, often, causally directed treatments are now available for the treatment or even prevention of neurologic disease.

Fundamentals of Neurology provides a window onto the fascinating world of clinical neurology. Although students sometimes find neurology bewilderingly complicated, it is in fact firmly based on logic and the known correlations between clinical phenomena and the sites of the lesions that cause them. In the first few chapters of this book, the emphasis lies on fundamentals, the clinical examination, topical diagnosis, and the differential diagnosis of neurologic manifestations and syndromes. This knowledge equips the student to understand the subsequent chapters, which concern diseases of the central and peripheral nervous system. For most patients, the history and physical examination will point to the correct neurologic diagnosis. Targeted ancillary testing can be used to verify, document, and refine the presumptive diagnosis that has already been made on clinical grounds, and thus lead the way to proper treatment. Today more than ever, it bears repeating that the clinical neurologic evaluation is indispensable; the clinical findings provide a context for the proper interpretation of the ancillary test findings, so that the correct treatment can be chosen.