Post Polio Syndrome

The effects of polio that occur decades after the disease has run its course--weakness, fatigue, pain, intolerance to cold, difficulty with breathing and swallowing--are often more devastating than the original disease. This book on the diagnosis and management of polio-related health problems is an essential resource for polio survivors and their families and health care providers. Dr. Julie K. Silver, who has both personal and professional experience with post-polio syndrome, begins the book by defining and describing PPS and providing a historical overview of its diagnosis and treatment. Chapters that follow discuss finding good medical care, dealing with symptoms, maintaining proper nutrition and weight, preventing osteoporosis and falls, and sustaining mobility. Dr. Silver reviews the latest in braces, shoes, assistive devices, and wheelchairs and scooters. She also explores issues involving managing pain, surgery, complementary and alternative medicine, safe and comfortable living environments, insurance and disability, and sex and intimacy.

Today many polio survivors are finding themselves with new symptoms reminiscent of the earlier days when they first had polio-new symptoms that trigger frightening memories, along with anxieties that had long been repressed. Dr. Backman, a Clinical Psychologist, examines polio survivors' psychological reactions to their earlier experiences and to their current struggles with the late effects of polio. The Post-Polio Experience includes guidelines for polio survivors on: Coping with the emotional and interpersonal aspects of Post-Polio Syndrome Managing stress and depression Negotiating relationships with family and friends Developing a positive self-concept Improving doctor-patient communication Family and friends learn how to deal with the changing roles that they and the survivor now face, and gain insight into their own needs, as they interact and sometimes conflict with the polio survivor's needs. Mental health providers and physicians gain a better understanding of their patients' psychological reactions to Post-Polio Syndrome-paving the way for more effective treatment.

Although the threat of polio ended with the Salk vaccine in 1954, many polio survivors are now experiencing the onset of post-polio syndrome (PPS), a complication with new but related symptoms such as chronic fatigue and joint pain.

Available in the US, Canada, Latin America, and South East Asia (except Japan) only. Not distributed by LWW in Europe.

We are pleased to offer this all new professional reference guide to living well with post-polio. The Second Edition provides all-new, contact and resource information, as well as updated medical content. Edited by Lauro S. Halstead, M.D., Managing Post-Polio provides a comprehensive overview on dealing with the medical, psychological, vocational, and many other challenges of living with post-polio syndrome. Written by 20 authorities in their fields, the majority of whom are polio survivors themselves, Managing Post-Polio distills and summarizes the wealth of information presented at conferences and published in the medical literature over the past 20 years. This information is supplemented with personal stories of seven individuals who provide eloquent testimony to the many ways people have prevailed in the face of ongoing disability. Managing Post-Polio was written by healthcare professionals who work with and counsel patients with post-polio syndrome and who need an up-to-date and quick reference, as well as a guide to living well for persons who have had polio, their families, friends, and loved ones. As Dr. Halstead, a polio survivor himself, observes in the introduction, "this book was written and edited partly to help me deal better with my own unique disability and to help the many thousands of other polio survivors in this country and around the world deal more effectively with their unique version of polio disability."

Provides all stakeholder groups with information that will place them at the leading edge of service delivery to those experiencing Post Polio Syndrome. It takes a multidiscilinary and holistic approach and is targeted towards helping to enrich the practitioner client relationship to the benefit of both.

Post-polio syndrome (PPS) embodies the new neuromuscular symptoms that patients with prior paralytic poliomyelitis develop after a stable course from 20 to 40 years. These include new muscle weakness, fatigue, muscular atrophy, muscle pain and various secondary muscular complaints. Fundamental questions regarding the neurobiology of the motor neurones previously affected by the poliovirus, the ongoing changes of the reinnervating process, and the potential role of the poliovirus in generating a chronic immune stimulation or viral persistence are discussed in this volume. Data from the neurological, immunological, virological, electrophysiological and rehabilitational fields is presented, shedding light on the pathogenesis of post-polio syndrome, as well as that of other motor neurone diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Approx.240 pages

Polio--often called the "summer plague"--struck hundreds of thousands of children around the world between its emergence as an epidemic disease in 1916 to its cure in the 1950s. Today, images of children with crutches and leg braces or encased to their necks in iron lungs may be little more than a painful memory. Yet during its height the disease induced panic on a scale reminiscent of the great plagues of history. This book is the most comprehensive and compelling account of the century's polio epidemics yet written. Interweaving biographical, political, social, and medical history, Tony Gould--a distinguished British writer and himself a polio survivor--traces the rise and fall of the epidemics and describes the individuals who were influential in its treatment and conquest. He tells of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the most celebrated polio sufferer of all, who set up his own hydrotherapy center at Warm Springs in Georgia; John Enders, the Nobel prizewinner who made the crucial breakthrough in the laboratory; FDR's lieutenant, Basil O'Connor, whose "March of Dimes" became a byword for successful fund-raising; Sister Elizabeth Kenny, the larger-than-life nurse from the Australian outback who challenged medical orthodoxy and invented "miracle" cures; and finally the scientific rivals Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, caught in a dramatic race to produce a viable vaccine. Gould then examines the experience of polio survivors on both sides of the Atlantic, including a moving autobiographical account of his own struggle with the disease and resulting disability. Although the disease has been eliminated in the West, it has not disappeared: paralytic polio remains a scourge in India, the Far East, and parts of Africa. And there are new worries that fatigue and accelerated muscular weakness--a "post-polio syndrome"--has come to afflict survivors three or four decades after the initial attack. Gould's powerful book, published forty years after the successful trial of the Salk vaccine, helps us to understand the savage and continuing impact of polio.