Khosro Hekmat
Answering yes to four questions is not yet a diagnosis. Cramps, nerve damage, veins, joints, medicines and the plain impatience of sitting still meet the same four criteria as restless legs syndrome. In one family study, 16 in 100 people who demonstrably did not have RLS did exactly that. This volume takes the twelve most important mimics apart one by one and gives for each the feature that gives it away: the calf cramp by the muscle you can feel, polyneuropathy by its stocking pattern, akathisia by involving the whole body rather than the legs, the vein disorder by its course across the day. At the end it turns the question round. The same imprecision that marks healthy people as ill lets the genuinely affected slip through - and the two together explain why the diagnosis is so often wrong. WHAT IS IN THE BOOK- What a questionnaire can achieve and what it cannot- The fifth criterion: the story of a necessary correction- Calf cramp, polyneuropathy, akathisia, veins, joints and the back- When a medicine is what makes the legs restless- Periodic limb movements and the twitches of the night- In children: growing pains, restless sleep and ADHD- When both apply: RLS and a mimic at the same time- Five questions that tell them apart in five minutes WHO THIS BOOK IS FORFor patients whose treatment is not working and who want to know whether the diagnosis is right, for anyone with unexplained leg symptoms, and for health professionals looking for a structured differential diagnosis. ABOUT THE SERIESVolume 10 of 52 in the book series on restless legs syndrome, part 'Forms of the Condition and Differential Diagnosis'. Every volume can be read on its own. The statements in this volume rest on 195 professional sources, each one listed individually in the reference section.
