Cram Session in Manual Muscle Testing: A Handbook for Students & Clinicians.

Cram Session in Manual Muscle Testing: A Handbook for Students & Clinicians

Editor: Lynn Van Ost.

Bibliographic Data: ISBN: 978-1-55642-997-2; 2012 by SLACK Incorporated, NJ, USA, 216 pages, soft cover (alk. paper),$31.95.

Subjects: Manual Muscle Testing, Neck, Trunk, Upper and Lower Extremities.

Description: Cram Session in Manual Muscle Testing: A Handbook for Students & Clinicians is a succinct and descriptive quick reference that provides the rehabilitation professional with a very basic approach to various manual muscle techniques. Organized in a "head to toe" format, this book takes user-friendly and efficient learning to a new level.

Purpose: The goal of the book, as stated in the preface, is to serve as a stand-alone quick reference for the reader in the topic of manual muscle testing. The author is purporting to make the task of manual muscle testing a bit easier to accomplish in the clinical setting.

Audience: The book is written for all students and clinicians in physical therapy, occupational therapy, athletic training, orthopedics or any allied health professional who performs musculoskeletal examinations.

Features: The book is 216 pages, composed of two sections and chapters relating to 14 body regions in a "head-to-toe" format. There are over 200 photographs that illustrate testing in both the anti-gravity and gravity minimized positions. Section 1 includes the body regions of the neck and upper extremity. These are the neck, scapula, shoulder, elbow, forearm, wrist, fingers II to V and thumb. The body regions of the trunk and lower extremity, those are the trunk, hip, knee, ankle, great toe and toes II to V are subjected in section 2. Finally, there are 4 appendices that describe manual muscle testing grading, general procedures for testing, terminology and factors that may cause inaccurate muscle testing.

Assessment: This handbook gives basic understanding of manual muscle testing and is supplemented by concise and illustrative examples of the techniques. Each chapter about a body region is subdivided into the specific movement to be tested, active range of motion, the prime and secondary movers of the movement, the subject positions in the anti-gravity and gravity minimized situations, muscle grading for each movement and substitutions for the movement.

Reviewed by: Ufuk Sekir, MD, Assoc. Prof., Department of Sports Medicine, Medical School of Uludag University, Bursa, Turkey