Diagnostic Procedures in Disorders of Calcium Metabolism.

This book was designed to be a handbook in which would be assembled "those diagnostic procedures which may be useful in the investigation and diagnosis of the principal disorders of calcium metabolism, together with the laboratory procedures required to carry them out." An additional objective was "to indicate the extent of their usefulness." The book succeeds in its first objective, proving to be a useful handbook, especially for the laboratory that is not primarily oriented in the direction of calcium and phosphorus metabolism and bone physiology. In the second objective, the authors are less successful. The critical judgment offered for the indications for, and interpretation of, various procedures in evaluating a given patient is minimal; when it is provided it is drawn almost entirely from the authors' own work and thus represents to a great extent their own bias. The reader frequently ends a session uncertain as to why