Includes Appendix and Index

Intensive care medicine is an evolving speciality in which the amount of available information is growing daily and increasingly, textbooks reflect this in terms of their size. Size and
immediate clinical utility are often inversely related and ‘bottom line’ practicality is drowned
in comprehensive discussion. The natural habitat of this new textbook of critical care and
emergency medicine is on the desktops of Intensive Care units, High Dependency units,
acute medical or surgical wards, Accident & Emergency departments and maybe even
operating theatres where it is easily accessible with useful and relevant information.
While aimed primarily at a specialist readership including clinicians, nurses, and other
allied health professionals in Critical Care, Anaesthesia and the acute specialities, we hope
it will find a niche with anyone involved in care of the critically ill, whether in specialist areas
or in the wards.
It is intended that the key feature of this book is ease of access to up-to-date relevant
evidenced-based information regarding the management of commonly encountered conditions, techniques, and problems in those who are critically ill. Most importantly that it is
practical and useful. The content of the book is based, wherever possible and useful, upon
the latest sets of guidelines from national or international bodies (e.g. Society of Critical
Care Medicine, European Society of Intensive Care Medicine). We hope the book will be
useful not only in the United Kingdom, but to anyone using international guidelines. Indeed,
the range of invited authors incorporates a large number of countries but for all, the common theme is management of the critically ill.
To facilitate the key aim of rapid and easy access to information, the book is designed
such that each subject will form a self-contained topic in its own right, laid out across two
(or, for larger subjects, up to four) pages. This format facilitates the use of the book as a
desk reference and we envisage that it will be consulted in the clinic or ward setting for
information on the optimum management of a particular condition.
It is the fervent wish of the editors that this book, one in a series of desk top books from
Oxford University Press, becomes a valuable tool in the management of critically ill patients.