The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. British volumeVol. 92-B, No. 6 Book ReviewsFree AccessPathophysiology of orthopaedic diseases H. J. Mankin Pp. 189. Rosemount: AAOS, 2006. ISBN: 0-89203-416-5. £93.50G. BentleyG. BentleySearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:1 Jun 2010https://doi.org/10.1302/0301-620X.92B6.24796AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsAdd to Favourites ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail Henry Mankin has an outstanding reputation as an orthopaedic surgeon, teacher and researcher, over a period of five decades. He is a master of the lecture and those of us who have had the benefit of hearing him will not forget the experience. It was thus with great pleasure that I read this text. Based upon the Jaffe-Campbell-Erdheim-Mankin collection, commencing with material accumulated by Dr Henry Jaffe from 1925, Dr Mankin has added material from Drs Erdheim, Campbell and himself. The collection now resides in Boston. He pays particular homage to Henry Jaffe who had a profound effect on his own approach to the musculoskeletal system.The text itself is a collection of chapters on major orthopaedic conditions, including fracture healing. They are presented in systematic order to cover natural history, histology, clinical features, diagnosis, treatment, and conclusions. Many conditions are now less common in Western Medicine but still very relevant worldwide – tuberculosis, syphilis, anterior poliomyelitis and haematogenous osteomyelitis. Other conditions are rare but represent a challenge, in that the diagnosis and the aetiology remain unknown. Dr. Mankin presents current knowledge on these varying topics with assurance.The historical descriptions of articular cartilage, osteoarthritis and metabolic bone disease are outstanding. I was particularly impressed by the chapters on pigmented villonodular synovitis, synovial chondromatosis, Langerhans cell histiocytosis, osteogenesis imperfecta, Gaucher disease, osteopetrosis and extra-abdominal desmoid tumour.It is traditional to make criticisms in book reviews, although doing so seems ungracious, and in this instance, hard. In the chapter on poliomyelitis a mention is made of the ‘post-polio’ syndrome which is indeed ill-understood. It is surprising that Dr Mankin did not mention that this may simply be a phenomenon of ageing, globally effected through metabolic and neurological degeneration.In the chapter on synovial chondromatosis, a minor observation is that in modern practice, such patients quite often present before there is any radiologic evidence, and are diagnosed by the appearance of a ‘snow storm’ in the form of osteocartilaginous loose bodies in the joint seen at arthroscopy. The diagnosis can be missed and it is therefore important always to empty the fluid from the joint through a wide bone cannula into a suitable container to search for such fragments. In the chapter on Paget’s disease of bone, Dr Mankin concentrates on many possible aetiologies but does not mention the possibility of some influence in the local water supply which is thought by some to be responsible for the varying regional incidence.I have only one significant criticism of the book’s production and that is in the illustrations. Some of the radiographs lack clarity, and the absence of colour throughout the text is a pity when there is so much excellent histological material. Other than these I think this book achieves precisely what Dr. Mankin intended, namely to indicate “the nature, appearance and clinical behaviour of an array of Orthopaedic diseases”.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Vol. 92-B, No. 6 Metrics Downloaded 221 times History Published online 1 June 2010 Published in print 1 June 2010 InformationCopyright © 2010, The British Editorial Society of Bone and Joint Surgery: All rights reservedPDF download