Manual of Nerve Conduction Velocity and Clinical Neurophysiology, 3rd Ed.

This is the third edition of this manual produced by Joel DeLisa, Chairman of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, UMD-New Jersey Medical School. As stated in the preface, the book‘s objectives are to serve as a guide for performing motor and sensory nerve conduction and velocity studies, to provide ready access to standardized values for these studies, and to serve as a reference for uncommon nerves tested. The book has met those objectives, and its format and content have improved since the previous edition. The new edition is almost twice as long and has updated references. It is organized with an introduction reviewing general techniques, technical problems, trouble-shooting, and temperature effects. I t then proceeds from cranial t o caudal, giving descriptions of each nerve conduction technique (including electrode placement and equipment settings), specific normal values for the nerve from the referenced studies, and illustrations demonstrating the setup. Although the book includes comments about whether temperature or distance was mentioned in the reference, it does not necessarily comment on the pitfalls or utility of using one technique over the other. Techniques for uncommonly tested nerves such as the greater auricular nerve and medial calcaneal nerves have also been added. Reflexes, late waves, and long latencies, including sympathetic skin responses, are reviewed. Two chapters are essentially unchanged: one discusses repetitive stimulation studies and the second, which covers pediatric studies, unfortunately cites only motor conduction velocities without mention of amplitudes, distal latencies, or sensory response values. Evoked potentials are presented over 100 pages. This topic is perhaps disproportionately represented, as other nerve conduction techniques and explanations (such as those involving Martin-Gruber anastomoses, for example) could have been included. Five new chapters have been added t o t h i s edition: Intraoperat ive Monitoring Using Somatosensory Evoked Potent ia ls , Auditory a n d Visual Evoked Potent ia ls , Magnetoelectric Stimulation, Motor Unit Action Potential Analysis, Single Fiber Electromyography and Anatomy. These chapters are not extensively detailed, but they set out to meet the objective, as previously stated, of providing a description of techniques and referenced values. The appendix contains a very useful list of terms used in clinical EMG, as well as illustrations of selected waveforms. All in all, this book is a useful reference that would certainly be beneficial to the electromyographer and electrophysiologic laboratories.