Save Your Knees - Softcover

Bum knees have sidelined professional and amateur athletes alike, and until recently, the diagnosis was I.D.K., an acronym for internal knee derangement that specialists joked actually stood for "I Don't Know." The prognosis has improved somewhat, and orthopedic surgeon Fox and veteran medical writer McGuire offer a definitive book on the knee that will encourage a wide audiencefrom athletes to arthritics. A delightful bedside manner is enhanced by their gift for visualizing difficult images in easy-to-understand terms (the anatomy lesson describes the knee joint as "two giant bones propped on top of one another, held together by the anatomical equivalent of rubber bands"). Save Your Knees explains how the knee works, why it gets hurt, how to self-diagnose problems and when and when not to worry about them, and how to find reliefin surgery, exercise therapy, properly fitting shoes and the like. The book discusses questions a patient should ask a physician, as well as pain pills and potions. There are a sport-by-sport breakdown on how to prevent knee injury and a section on exercises that can be performed at home.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fox (a physician) and McGuire (editor of Knee News and Sports Medicine ) offer a readable study of the knee, its pathology, and injury for the layperson. They cover most of the material in four sections: symptoms and causes of knee problems, possible treatments and rehabilitation, considerations when pursuing an athletic lifestyle, and problems of children and adolescents. Though Fox is a surgeon, he generally espouses an initially conservative, noninvasive approach to treatment. This book has fewer illustrations than Alan Halpern's Runner's World Knee Book ( LJ 2/1/85), but the information is comparable. At the price, Save Your Knees is worthwhile for public libraries. Recommended. Robert Jordan, Univ. of Iowa Libs., Iowa City
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.