A guide for polio survivors, their families and their health-care providers. It offers advice on all aspects of post-polio syndrome. Based on her extensive experience treating post-polio patients, Dr Silver discusses issues of crucial importance, including how to find the best medical care, deal with symptoms, sustain mobility, manage pain, approach insurance issues, and arrange a safe living environment.

Reviews

Silver is medical director of the Spaulding-Framingham Outpatient Center and heads the Spaulding Polio Center. As the granddaughter of a polio survivor, she skillfully correlates her grandfather's medical difficulties with problems she commonly encounters in treating polio survivors, adding an empathetic and compassionate tone to her solid medical text. She first defines and describes post-polio syndrome (PPS) and follows this with chapters on finding expert medical care, controversies over diagnosis and treatment, conserving energy, preventing falls and further disability, sex and intimacy, and the emotional and psychological aspects of coping with PPS. Her chapters are brief (averaging six pages), but they provide practical explanations and suggestions. They also continually emphasize the need for personalized evaluation by health professionals with experience in treating polio survivors. Aside from differences in citing medical studies and references, Silver's book is quite similar in scope and content to Managing Post-Polio: A Guide to Living Well with Post-Polio Syndrome (LJ 10/1/98), edited by Lauro Halstead. Silver, in fact, covers many of the same topics and cites several of the authors who contributed to Halstead's book (she herself was one of the contributors). It is unlikely that most collections need both books, recommending this primarily where Halstead's book is not available. Ximena Chrisagis, Fordham Health Sciences Lib., Wright State Univ., Dayton, OH Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.