Abstract

Clinical guidelines are systematically developed statements to help doctors and their colleagues make decisions about appropriate health care for specific disorders. Such guidelines ought to be properly based on published peer reviewed practice. However, there is little of this sort of help in Huntington’s disease, although the literature base is growing. This paper does not attempt to be definitive, rather it presents a method of management which has evolved to match the needs of patients as they emerge, and which as far as is possible, is in accord with the evidence available at present.

HISTORY

In 1872, at a medical meeting in Ohio, USA, George Huntington (Huntingdon 1872) described the disease which later came to bear his name. He was a young general practitioner who worked in his father’s practice, as had his father’s father before that. They therefore had known several generations of some families and had recognised the