Neurology
Neurological diseases are very difficult to categorise, since they are so wide ranging. Having an understanding of basic neuro-physiology will be pretty useful to you, and please remember that this is not, by any means, an exhaustive list.
Head injury is awesome. But not for the person with the injury. Or the doctors. Or anybody. So I was lying. And as such, I should be punished with paraesthesia.
Headache
Headache is probably the most common neurological complaint. It is split into acute, recurrent, subacute and chronic.
Cerebrovascular Disease
These the key diseases where there is a failure in vascular supply, either due to haemorrhage or ischaemia. Most people will have encountered stroke at some point, along with TIAs. Also very important are extracerebral haemorrhages, i.e.subarachnoid, subdural and extradural.
Degenerative Neurological Disease
All degenerative neurological diseases are horrible. Multiple sclerosis is well known, as is Motor neurone disease, though happily the later is less common. Parkinson’s disease generally hits the over 50s, and is the most common cause of Parkinsonism symptoms. Dementia is also worth knowing about, especially when working with the elderly.
Raised Intracranial Pressure
These are the ones that get people really terrified. Meningitis is fun for all the family, as is its less common cousin, Encephalitis. And the really scary one, is Intracranial tumours; where you get a headache, and you immediately start reading medical textbooks, and fretting about tumours the size of footballs inside your head.
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is the abnormal electric activity which in turn causes seizures. These are classified according to their different presentations.
Peripheral and Motor Neuropathy
Diabetic peripheral neuropathy is a growing problem, thanks to the increase in obesity. Two other peripheral conditions are Bell’s palsy and Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Two big muscular disorders are Myasthenia gravis and Myotonic dystrophy