Inherited skeletal disorders have a fascination for many medical and surgical disciplines. For the geneticist there is interest in the study of families and their inheritance of lesions. The paediatrician is concerned because most of the disorders present in childhood as a problem in clinical differential diagnosis. The radiologist is interested because of the manifest, multiple and curious bone changes that provide a challenge in diagnosis and classification. The orthopaedic surgeon is involved because they present a challenge in the management of the many and various lesions of the limbs and trunk. Most of the text books are slanted towards one or other aspect of the subject, depending upon the specialist interests of their author. Though informative to colleagues in their own discipline, the information which they contain is liable to be overwhelming in its complexity or unhelpful in its content for the orthopaedic surgeon or trainee. Frank Horan and Peter Beighton have aimed their admirable and concise monograph to help the orthopaedic surgeon-the one individual who is likely to be able to ameliorate the musculo-skeletal problems from which so many of the children and adults with these diseases suffer. In recent years, much more orthopaedic help has become available for dysplastics.

Much confusion exists in the accurate identification and classification of the many disorders in infancy which affect the skeleton by producing sclerosing lesions throughout the entire skeleton or in selected areas. A scholarly effort to bring order into this confusing field must be welcomed. Professors Beighton and Cremin have skillfully defined the problem and concisely yet thoroughly have identified the various sclerosing dysplasias. They bring to this task a wealth of clinical experience in their many years in the Departments of Radiology at the University of Cape Town Medical School and the Groote Schuur and Red Cross Children's Hospitals in Cape Town, South Africa. The authors also have had available data from the University of Cape Town Skeletal Dysplasia Registry. Professors Beighton and Cremin have used as a basis for their treatise the Paris Nomenclature (the modified version of 1977). This monograph is a felicitous combination of a working atlas and a scholarly exposition of the various sclerosing bone dysplasias, considering in detail eighteen major entities adopted from the Paris classification. Other disorders which present with osteosclerosis are also described. These include Caffey disease, oculodento-osseous dysplasia, central osteosclerosis with bamboo hair, fluorosis, osteosclerosis associated with renal disease and mastocytosis.

The tremendous expansion of medical knowledge during the last few decades, together with the introduction of many new diagnostic techniques, has demanded such a degree of specialisation that no single individual can be conversant with all the information available. More and more emphasis, therefore, has been placed on the importance of teamwork and close collaboration between associated disciplines. The bone dysplasias of infancy represent a classical example of this concept. Only a few years ago these heritable conditions were divided into a relatively small number of entities, for many of which "atypical variants" were accepted. More recent studies have resulted in appreciation and early recognition of a large number of these disorders, thanks to co-operation between paediatricians, radiologists, geneticists and biochemists. Not only maya reasonably accurate prognosis be offered for the affected child in many instances, but, almost of greater value, genetic counselling concerning the chance of subsequent offspring being similarly affected has become available to parents. Most radiologists have little opportunity of becoming familiar with this rapidly widening field of diagnosis, so that the occasional case which may be encountered is likely to engender diagnostic difficulty. This Atlas should facilitate greatly the solution of the problem. It has been prepared by Professor CREMIN, an outstanding paediatric radiologist whose work has been known and admired by me for many years, in close collaboration with his colleague Professor BEIGHTON, a geneticist of great distinction.