Essentials of Spinal Disorders

J. C. Eck, C. P. DiPaola. Essentials of Spinal Disorders. New Delhi, India: Jaypee Brothers; 2014

Medicine and Surgery are split into a continuously increasing number of subspecialties; one single specialist hardly can follow.

Spinal disorders and related surgery are a rather new field, interesting neurologists, radiologists, orthopaedic surgeons, and neurosurgeons. Beside huge multiauthored textbooks, there is a place for concise, well-documented textbooks where the interested colleague could find sound basic knowledge, essential information about major pathologies, and their treatment, in a compact textbook with an equilibrium between a well-organized text and enough informative figures.

The new “Essentials of Spinal Disorders” issued in early 2014 responds to this challenge and brings up well-written chapters about spine pathology—traumatic, degenerative, inflammatory, or tumoral. The reader is first addressed with anatomy, imaging, and biomechanics of the spine, and then finds essential science about the major pathologies.

Both authors are dedicated orthopaedic spine surgeons from the University of Massachusetts (Worcester, Massachusetts, United States) and did a very good job by bringing their knowledge into this book with a good general structure, well-referenced chapters, and attracting figures. Of course, this book is not an encyclopedia, but it may be easily opened by all interested conservative and operative colleagues—and why not by related health professionals (physiotherapists) as they could rapidly find pertinent information about a particular pathology, an operative technique including well-descriptive figures, or basic knowledge once you get more interested in the spine.

Dr. Eck and DiPaola wanted us to become curious about the spine, and they succeeded in having us engrossed into a chapter once we started to skim through it. Any confirmed spine specialist certainly will need to extend his knowledge with further reading, but all those looking for precise and short basic knowledge will be very satisfied.