Book Review

DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR NEUROMUSCULARDISORDERS.

Edited by Alan E.H. Emery.Royal Society of Medicine Press, London, 1997,

104 pp.

This book is the result of years of work by the Euro-pean Neuromuscular Centre (ENMC) is assemblingworkshops of experts to define consensus criteria ineach category of neuromuscular disease. The goal ofthe ENMC has been to promulgate these criteria inorder to facilitate proper diagnosis of these diseasesand make reliable clinical and genetic studies possibly.This slim volume is the result of this work and willserve well the purposes for which it was published.Most of the criteria contained herein have been pub-lished at intervals in the journal Neuromuscular Dis-orders. That fine journal, however, is not on the stan-dard journal list of many medical libraries. Even ifone’s library subscribes, this book’s publication price of$20.00 is a reasonable cost to have all the criteriareadily available in one place.

One would be hard pressed to find fault with thisbook. The biggest fault is that it is not very readable,but it is not intended to be. Its mission is admirableand well executed. While more common illnesses arerepresented (such as inclusion body myositis), thegreatest use of the consensus criteria may be in facili-tating diagnosis of rarer syndromes. In these cases col-laboration—even between continents—may be neces-sary, and accurate phenotyping is, as always, the nec-essary precursor to genetic characterization.

In short, this little book belongs on the shelf of everyneuromuscular physician with a busy clinic, as well asthat of every geneticist with an interest in neuromus-cular disease.

Kevin M. FlaniganDepartments of Neurology and Pathology and

Eccles Institute of Human GeneticsUniversity of UtahSalt Lake City, Utah

American Journal of Medical Genetics 79:411 (1998)

© 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.