During my specialist rehabilitation medicine training in Cambridge, I tried to find a suitable text to refer to when dealing with the usual mix of cases seen in a typical neurological rehabilitation service. I found many excellent large reference textbooks and also a few pocket books with a wealth of information. However, the popular books were either neurological texts concentrating mainly on neurological disorders as a primarily diagnostic challenge or general rehabilitation texts with a generalist approach and lacking the boldness of the standard medical texts in suggesting management plans from a medical perspective.

I wanted two main things: firstly, to know the medical management of the cases I saw and secondly to have an overview of the management of other impairments usually dealt with by other members of the team, such as psychological, physical or communication disabilities.

This book is trying to address such common issues. It is not intended as a comprehensive text covering all or even most of the common scenarios seen in a neurological rehabilitation setting; however, I hope that it will cover many common but difficult issues. The book takes the approach of presenting material as case histories. The case itself does not usually present a diagnostic problem but it is intended to set the scene for a discussion of a complex neurological rehabilitation issue.