Neurological disorders in children are common: families want to know what is wrong, why it happened, and whether it will happen again. Management and treatment depend on establishing the diagnosis, which usually requires investigations, but the number of possible neurological investigations is now very large indeed, and uncritical investigations may be seriously misleading and often costly. This book, based on the authors’ vast combined personal experience, gives practical guidance on how to target any specific condition with the minimum of tests.

Part 1 is a brief distillation of advice on clinical history and examination, introducing the problems that beset those who deal with neurological disorders in childhood. Part 2 outlines the investigations available to solve these diagnostic problems. Part 3 takes a problem-oriented approach to the most appropriate investigations in the various clinical scenarios that may present to the practitioner: the starting point is the patient’s presentation, not the diagnosis. Throughout, vignettes of real cases help to illustrate the use of the tests in different clinical situations.

The authors co-wrote the hugely popular Handbook of Neurological Investigations (“the Blue Book”) 20 years ago. This new book, while closely following the highly successful approach of the earlier title, is thoroughly up to date, with fresh material, new case vignettes, and additional investigations covered.

Dr Mary D. King (Consultant Paediatric Neurologist, Children's University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland) and Professor John B. Stephenson (Honorary Professor in Paediatric Neurology and Senior Research Fellow, Division of Developmental Medicine, University of Glasgow, UK)