Textbook of Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic Brain Injury by Silver JM, McAllister TW,Yudofsky SC. Textbook of Traumatic Brain Injury.2nd Edition. American Psychiatric Association,Arlington, VA;2011Reviewed by: Dominick M. Maino, OD, MEd, FAAO, FCOVD-AThe topic of traumatic brain injury (TBI) is of continued interest to the optometric community, especially to those of us who often work with individuals that demonstrate a wide range of disability. The Textbook of Traumatic Brain Injury is a 660 + page hard cover book with 5 sections (parts) and 39 chapters. Each part covers fundamental aspects of TBI.Part 1 discusses Epidemiology and Pathophysiology, while Part 2 reviews Neuropsychiatric Disorders. Part 3 continues with Neuropsychiatric Symptomatologies. Part 4 highlights various Special Populations and Issues and finally Part 5 is all about Treatment. Each section has multiple chapters.The various chapter authors feature well known and respected clinicians and academicians with degrees in medicine, law, research PhDs, nursing, social work and yes, even optometry (Drs. Kenneth Ciuffreda and Neera Kapoor). I was pleasantly surprised to see a Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest page for the authors involved in this text. This is something you often see in journals,but seldom in textbooks.The first chapter on epidemiology is a must read for anyone working in this area. It clearly and succinctly lays out the incredible numbers of individuals affected by brain injury and strongly supports our involvement with this very special population. At the end of the chapter are all the references and suggested readings (another pleasant surprise). In chapter 2 (Neuropathology) full color photographs clearly show the impact of trauma on brain structures. Other topics discussed in this first section include genetic factors, neuropsychiatric assessment, imaging, electrophysiological assessment and neuropsychological assessment.Part 2 deals with neuropsychiatric disorders (confusion, mood, psychosis, post trauma stress)and personality changes. This section also reviews aggression, mild brain injury and post traumatic epilepsy. Part 3 has chapters that review the cognitive changes associated with TBI, problems with sleep, motivation and headaches. Vestibular dysfunction,vision problems, chronic pain and sexual dysfunction are also reviewed. (More on the chapter about vision problems later in this review). Part 4 discusses brain injury and war, sports injury, and TBI in children and adolescents. The final two chapters in this section specifically discuss the elderly and alcohol and drugs. The final section (Part 5) involves treatment and reviews the family, various systems of care and the social aspects. Legal issues, psychopharmacology, and psychotherapy are discussed. The last 3 chapters in this section include cognitive rehabilitation, behavioral intervention, and complementary/integrative treatments.The chapter on vision by Cuiffreda and Kapoor nicely reviews the prevalence of vision dysfunction within this population, the pathophysiology/anatomy and the examination protocol for those with TBI. Several pages are then devoted to the functional vision anomalies associated with TBI. They also wrote several paragraphs to differentiate the optometrist and what we have to offer versus the ophthalmologist. They specifically mention the College of Optometrists in Vision Development and the Neuro-optometric Rehabilitation Association as a resource to those serving the many needs of patients with brain injury. They did not specifically discuss the optometric treatment of these functional vision abnormalities in this chapter,however.This textbook is cleanly written and edited in a uniform manner with just about every appropriate TBI topic covered in a fairly thorough and complete manner. The "extras" like the suggested readings and full color photographs add to this se se of completeness. This text demonstrates that when medicine reaches out to other disciplines what results is a much stronger end product. It was also obvious that the editors wanted a well-rounded, scientifically sound and inclusive workI "found" this text on the new bookshelf in the Illinois College of Optometry library. After reading it from cover to cover, I purchased my own copy to reread and to use as a reference on a topic I find most fascinating. Every patient we see with TBI offers new and unique challenges. The Textbook of Traumatic Brain Injury will help all of us meet these challenges and to improve the quality of life of our patients. Buy it. Read it.PS: Since I was not interested in the online version, the extra charge for online access did not matter to me. However, as previous reviewers have noted, the publisher should make this known.This review was originally published in Optometry & Visual Development vol 43, #4 and is reprinted here with the permission of the editor (me). For more information please visit the College of Optometrists in Vision Development website.

I'm writing my memoirs of TBI, and wanted more information from medical publications. This text book has been extremely helpful, enlightening and made me realize that I also needed Stedman's Medical Dictionary as well. Thanks for having all of these available.

A thorough text and very good update from the first edition.

There is no online access with this book unless you pay another $25 per year! Oh, and this isn't made clear until after you are on the site to get the online access, after which you can't return the book. The cover of the book announces "with online access", with no caveats or warnings of extra costs.Dishonest online publisher deal makes the book less attractive.Amazon will take this back. We'll see.

I gave The Textbook of Traumatic Brain Injury, 2nd edition, by Silver, McAllister, and Yudofsky, one star because the system will not let you give negative numbers. First, because of the low expectation that the authors themselves have of the function of a test book, they state in their preface that: “Few people read a textbook of this length from cover to cover” (about 600 pages). Most decent collage and medical textbooks are about this length. If you want to go the “Cliffs Notes” or the “Neuroanatomy for Idiots” route, I sincerely hope you will consider career choices in the fast food service industry, rather than in medical science.This book is like a box full of disarticulated bone fragments without a copy of Grey’s Anatomy to fit them together into a meaningful and useful whole. This resembles the older practice of labeling patients as “fever cases”; true- but incomplete .The present classification of the TBIs is not quite this bad. TBI could be staged as cancers are, without the use of pejorative words. This would take some research, but what the heck, that means job opportunities, and ultimately better care and recovery for the afflicted victims. Absent a scientifically solid identification system, the patient falls into the mercy of box checking bureaucrats from a myriad of agencies. This is unacceptable.It would have been nice to have included a few bits of case studies in this book-to give it the human touch.A more serious flaw in this work is its failure to come to terms with the the lack of a real definition of mild Traumatic Brain injury, and itsmisleadingly deceptive use of the word” mild” to describe a condition that causes considerable and serious cognitive, behavioral, neuropsychiatric problems, and suffering to a large number of patients and their families in America alone. One might think the author’s opinion of mTBI is that of : “The Band-Aid syndrome”. Put a Band-Aid on it, take two aspirin, and go away. To borrow a phrase from a prominent institution: “ Mild injury may be anything but mild” .The author of the chapter on Mild Brain Injury in this book itself, also argues in favor of a more valid definition of mTBI ,as due other chapter authors. The way things are now, victims who are labeled with “Mild” TBI are not eligible for many forms of assistance. If there are around 3 million mTBI injuries in the USA each year, and if about 85% of them are prejudicially described as mild, with about 20%of those having long lasting harmful serious outcomes ; then there are at least one half a million people with bad medical problems added each year.The denial of the existence of the dangers of mTBI is reminiscent of other recent historic denials of medical conditions that were later accepted to be major health issues. Such as: PSTS, the high amount of lead in the blood of children that was thought to be safe, exposure to Agent Orange, exposure to Depleted Uranium, exposure to chemicals in Iraq, and so on. Dr. Greg J. Maloney, Ph.D.