Spinal Angiomas

This is a superb work, beautifully illustrated and thoughtfully written. The first chapter gives an excellent review of the anatomy and physiology of the blood supply to the spinal cord. The chapter on the pathology of spinal vascular malformations is also well done, although it suffers a bit from a tendency toward overclassification. The author (K. Jelliger) is obviously a "splitter" rather than a "grouper."

The senior editor (H. W. Pia) has had a wide experience treating spinal angiomas. The section on symptomatology is drawn primarily from his own case material (149 angiomas treated from 1953 through 1976). The coauthor likewise has based his study of the natural history of spinal arteriovenous malformations on extensive personal experience (150 malformations, 3,000 spinal angiomas in 15 years). It is of great interest that in Djindjian's series, all but one of the subarachnoid hemorrhages occurred in malformations that were partly or completely intramedullary