Neurological and muscular disorders

This chapter describes the anaesthetic management of the patient with those neurological or muscular disorders which are relevant to anaesthetic practice, including malignant hyperthermia (MH). Other topics covered include epilepsy, cerebrovascular disease; Parkinson’s disease; spinal cord lesions; myasthenia gravis; multiple sclerosis; Guillain-Barré syndrome; motor neuron disease; dystrophia myotonica and the muscular dystrophies. For each topic, pre-operative investigation and optimisation, treatment, and anaesthetic management are described.