Epidemiology of the Rheumatic Diseases Second Edition. AJ Silman, MC Hochberg (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 377, £95.00. ISBN: 0192631497.

Abstract

It may have escaped your notice, but we are currently living in the WHO’s ‘Bone and Joint Decade’. As part of the developed world’s move away from limiting their health concerns to fatal diseases, and thinking about chronic, disabling ones, the WHO has recognized that musculoskeletal disorders are amongst the most important chronic health problems throughout the world. Hence the ‘Decade’ which is concentrating on five issues: inflammatory rheumatic diseases, osteoarthritis and related disorders, back pain, osteoporosis and musculoskeletal trauma. In the developing world trauma is often the biggest of these problems, whilst in the ageing developed world osteoarthritis and osteoporosis assume the greatest importance. And that brings me to my only significant criticism of this book (as a reviewer I felt duty bound to find one): it deliberately limits itself to rheumatic disease problems of the developed world, and makes no mention of the types of problem that afflict the much bigger developing world. I realise that data on these problems are limited, and that much of the existing data would find fault with our rigorous, careful editors, nevertheless, they provide fascinating insights into other disorders, and are important to those populations that get them. The ‘Decade’ is a one-world initiative. Perhaps the publishers and editors could get the third edition out before the decade ends, and make it speak to the huge, increasing worldwide burden of the rheumatic diseases in a more representative way.