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Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: A Synthesis of Research and Clinical Practice
by Andrew Eisen and Charles Krieger, 303 pp, with illus, $74.95, ISBN 0-521-58103-6, New York, NY, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Arch Neurol. 1999;56:1418.
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Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a dreadful disease. Localized weakness, fasciculations, and wasting usually herald the onset. Patients dutifully make the rounds of specialists before finding themselves in a neuromuscular neurologist's office, where the final diagnosis is made. The patient is then faced with inexorable and relatively rapid loss of all motor functions, culminating in death from respiratory failure. This hopeless prognosis still exists, but things are now changing rapidly, and there is hope that in the near future major breakthroughs will occur in ALS research, leading to effective therapies.
This is the setting that prompted Eisen and Krieger to write their book on ALS. The book has many needed and outstanding features. It provides information on all aspects of ALS but is especially strong in its exposition of the status of research into the disease's etiology and therapy. It is short and readable and, given today's hyperinflation in the . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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