This tome’s subtitle should be “a scientific practical guide for clinicians;” most chapters review more recent research of their subjects, with minimal reference to clinical experience. This editorial approach is detrimental, in this reviewer’s opinion: since there is as much art as science in effectively managing a patient’s pain, this approach deprives readers of the potential benefit of learning, from the (presumably expert) authors’ successes and failures, how to best not/apply the available therapeutic knowledge. The authors (a PhD, a MD/DC and a DC) of the chapter on chronic spinal pain (for some reason, acute spinal pain is not given its due), for example, delivered on introductory intentions to review “... substrates producing spinal pain relevant to spinal manual medicine [SMM] ...” and overviewing SMM from a research perspective, then apparently felt all their goals were reached – mistakenly, because no “... overview of SMM ... from a clinical ... perspective” was apparent to this reviewer.
This is a comprehensive, multidimensional, interdisciplinary, scientific text. Paraphrasing Fain and Webster, to clinicians, pain is a many splendored thing. Thus, editors and authors representing many health care disciplines and sciences succeed in instilling appreciation of pain from perspectives of patient and practitioner; diagnosis and management; past and present.
Chapters are referenced, but selectively, favouring recent publication over balanced review. Tables (those analyzing published clinical trials for different pains are especially useful), diagrams and photographs aplenty are used effectively. However, for the likely readers – mostly open-minded clinicians, seeking alternatives, and scholars, seeking circumspect orientation – dividing this opus into several volumes would render referring to it painless.