The mission of health operators and hospitals is nowadays patient satisfaction, which is to be achieved through the provision of high-quality medical care and the training of graduates and postgraduates with the highest level of proficiency, integrity and skill. This book offers a broad panorama of recent progress in the fields of perioperative medicine, critical care and end-of-life care, thus contributing to achieving these aims in the fields of anesthesia and critical care.
Doody Review Services
**Reviewer:**David J. Dries, MD(University of Minnesota Medical School)
**Description:**This monograph describes key issues in anesthesia and critical care education.
**Purpose:**A yearbook of key topics is provided with specific emphasis on 2004.
**Audience:**Trainees and teachers with an interest in critical care medicine are offered a series of summary presentations. Presenters are an international faculty collected through the medical school at Trieste and Cattinara hospital.
**Features:**The gamut of critical care as related to anesthesiology is covered with advances in endotracheal intubation, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and management of the operating room, recovery room and postoperative period. Pure critical care issues receive less discussion with emphasis on pulmonary embolism, lung infections, and intravascular catheter-related infectious complications. A concluding chapter reviews recent discussion of end-of-life care. Chapters are well written with texture of type dividing minor subject headings. Tables and line drawings are infrequently used and there are no photographs. Each chapter contains a brief reference list with citations dating to the year of publication. For the most part, these represent original work but European journals receive emphasis. A brief table of contents provides a division of chapters by type of subject matter and provides authorship. A subject index of 4? pages provides additional access to topics.
**Assessment:**This book provides an overview of issues in the field weighted toward the anesthesiologist as opposed to the intensivist. The intensivist will find a broad annual review of primary literature in the Year Book of Critical Care Medicine (Mosby, 2004) and a more complete set of summary essays in the book edited by J. L. Vincent, Intensive Care Medicine: Annual Update 2004 (Springer-Verlag, 2004).