Minimal Brain Dysfunction in Children

This excellent work achieves its objective as a comprehensive survey of current knowledge in the field of intracranial tumours of infants and child- hood most successfully.The authors base their text on their experience in the analysis of 700 cases of brain tumours in the Department of Neurosurgery in Vienna and their personal experiences in the United States of America and Europe.The book deals with clinical, diagnostic, and therapeutic aspects of brain tumours starting from and main- taining a strong anatomical and pathological basis.The contents are set out in three main parts.Part I consists of an introduction, statistics, and a useful chapter on increased intracranial pressure.The various classifications of brain tumours are enumera- ted in this first part.The authors thereafter, in the main body of the book, use the classification of Zulch followed by the appropriate synonyms.The relative frequency in the young of infratentorial tumours is again shown, as is the rarity of meningio- mas.Parts II and III are concerned with supratentorial and infratentorial tumours respectively.Each part opens with a general discussion including the clinical picture and a brief account of diagnostic tests and treatment.It then deals in sections methodic- ally and in depth with tumours as they affect the hemispheres or special areas of the brain, using the Zulch pathological classification.Each of these sections is again prefaced with remarks concerning the clinical picture and more detailed and appro- priate diagnostic tests and treatment constituting the main bulk of the extremely well-produced work.In addition to the three main parts, which are excellent, there are chapters on metastatic tumours, chemotherapy, and a list of differential diagnoses.The book is very well illustrated with more than 300 figures, many of which are composite and include radiographs, photomicrographs, operative and clinical photographs, and many useful diagrams and graphs.There are more than 20 Tables.On occasions, where there are many illustrations, they unfortunately tend to extend into the following subsections of text.A small amount of time spent in familiarization with the lay-out of the book is time well spent.This comment also applies to the final