This text offers the reader a good overview of a relatively rare group of disorders — the idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM). Although concise, the chapters are sufficiently detailed to provide readers with an opportunity to expand their knowledge and whet their appetite to read further.
This book has internationally acclaimed myositis experts contributing chapters. The contents are divided into 5 major sections: Overview, Differential Diagnosis, Important Disease Subtypes, Investigations, Treatment and Outcome. The chapters are succinct, generally well written, and recently referenced, although references in some chapters should be expanded and updated. Cross-referencing from chapter to chapter could be improved to make the text feel more cohesive.
Key point summaries at the beginning of each chapter are useful to the reader and reflect and summarize the chapter’s contents. Figures and tables are used very effectively throughout the text and provide relevant details as well as clinical approaches to many topics including classification criteria, toxic myopathies, genetic myopathies, myositis-specific antibodies, and core set measures of activity. The photographs, however, are very small, generally of poor quality, and mostly black and white, obscuring important histological and clinical features. This severely limits their usefulness to the reader.
I would have liked a chapter devoted to a clinical-histological-serological approach to diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of IIM, briefly alluded to in several chapters but not clearly articulated. The chapter on Aetiology and Pathogenesis was particularly well done.
This text is very readable and has valuable information about a relatively rare group of muscle disorders. I would recommend it to students of rheumatology, including residents and fellows, as well as practicing rheumatologists.