You are standing at the bedside of a 34-year-old woman with three days of progressive ataxia, an MRI that returns with longitudinally extensive T2 cord signal across four vertebral segments, and a registrar asking whether to start methylprednisolone now or wait for the AQP4 antibodies.
The wrong call cascades — empirical steroids that compromise a future biopsy, a missed NMOSD relapse that scars the optic nerve, a "transverse myelitis" labelled idiopathic that returns six months later as MOG-associated disease.
This handbook rebuilds your clinical reasoning around the framework that actually works at the bedside — localise first, narrow the differential by anatomy, then commit to the time-critical decision.
• Localise before you image — the Clinical Localization System runs through all 30 chapters and consolidates in a 25-page anchor compendium indexed by anatomy, examination finding, and imaging pattern
• Master the time-critical decisions — DAWN and DEFUSE-3 tissue-based thrombectomy selection out to 24 hours, the Stupp protocol with tumour-treating fields, the apnea test for brain death determination
• Recognise the 2026 disease-modifying era — lecanemab and donanemab for Alzheimer's, vorasidenib for IDH-mutant glioma, tofersen for SOD1-ALS, the emerging orexin agonists for narcolepsy
• Diagnose FND on positive signs — Hoover's, entrainment, eyes closed in functional seizures, with the DSM-5-TR framework that ends diagnosis by exclusion
• Apply HINTS at the bedside — separate vestibular neuritis from posterior circulation stroke in the first 48 hours when DWI still misses the infarct
• Navigate the new immune-related adverse events — checkpoint inhibitor encephalitis, the myasthenia-myositis-myocarditis triad, the syndromes oncology will refer to you next week
• Deliver an FND diagnosis that heals rather than harms — the validated communication framework that improves outcomes
Written for resident physicians, neurology fellows, hospitalists, internists, emergency physicians, advanced practice clinicians, and senior medical students engaged with neurological patients.
Buy this handbook now and commit to the bedside reasoning your patients deserve.