Perinatal medicine, which is concerned with the problems of the fetus and newborn, has rapidly developed in the last two decades as an important and challenging specialty. Rapid advances in the field, coupled with tech nological advances, now are making survival of infants with weights as low as 500 grams possible. Ventilator care for severe respiratory problems is on the verge of being replaced by surfactant replacement therapy; on the other hand, development of such technologies as extracorporeal mem brane oxygenation and jet ventilation has revolutionized the care of these sick infants. The advances taking place today in the field of perinatal medicine make periodic updates, like the one provided by this volume, a virtual necessity for clinicians and paramedical personnel alike. A distinguished group of specialists in various aspects of perinatal medicine has contributed to this book. Their wide-ranging experience and points of view should make this book a valuable reference for all physicians and allied health personnel involved in the care of the high-risk fetus and newborn. MANOHAR RATHI, M.D. Acknowledgements. I am grateful to the contributors for their cooperation in preparing the manuscripts, to my associates for their help and support, and to the publishers for their continued interest in this work. Above all, I thank Ms. Rose Aiello-Lech and Ms. MaryAnn Cichowski for their hard work in making this publication possible."

The primary mission of the medical school is to create new doctors. Once the medical student has received his or her doctorate, the medical school's interest in, and acceptance of, responsibility for the continued professional development of the physician ceases almost entirely. Yet, with scientific advances in medicine increasing exponentially and the inevitable erosion of memory with time, teachings from our schools of medicine become increasingly irrelevant, forgotten, or both. To maintain competence, the physician must continuously re-educate him- or herself. CME-Continuing Medical Education-will probably never attain the status of the medical school's degree-granting undergraduate program, but medical schools and their faculties must recognize their responsibility, not creating competent physicians but also for maintaining that com only for petence. is the product of a Continuing Medical Education program This volume initiated by the Department of Anesthesiology at the Albert Einstein Col lege of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center. Our Department of Anes thesiology has historically been, and continues to be, unusually active in post-doctoral education through regional and national conferences and symposia. We recognized, however, that programs that bring physicians together in one location for a limited menu of lectures, questions, and discussion reach only a fraction of the potential audience of anesthesiolo gists. Such programs, as valuable as they are, by their very structure exclude more anesthesiologists than they include."

Despite the progress that has been made in intensive care medicine, sepsis and septic shock are still accompanied by a high mortality rate. In recent years, new therapeutic approaches have been developed on the basis of a better understanding of this complex condition. This monograph contains contributions by well-known scientists and clinicians in the fields of hygienics, microbiology, infectious diseases, physiology, surgery and intensive care medicine. It provides an up-to-date overview of the etiology, pathophysiology, prevention, and therapy of sepsis and its complications.

New findings involving the brain in traumatic and septic shock and after brain injury are reported in this book, including pathophysiological and pathohistological results. An experimental and clinical approach to treatment is presented together with specific results obtained from the encephalogram and from histopathological study with regard to the immunohistochemistry of toxic lipid peroxidant products. The latest results of clinical and experimental pathophysiology in inflammatory processes after traumatic brain injury and the therapeutic effects of hypertonic fluid therapy are also discussed.

The number of studies on chronic and recurrent pain bears no relation to the frequency of these complaints in gynecologic practice, nor to the clinical and scientific problems that still need solving in this area. Several factors stand in the way of progress in this field, such as the strongly subjective nature of the complaints, the frequent lack of correlation between them and objective findings, and the complexity of the psychosomatic interac tions involved. Although progress in our knowledge has been much slower than we would have wished, and although we are well aware of these many gaps, it was considered useful to gather in a book what we think we have learned during 3 decades of active interest in pain patients and pain problems in gynecologic practice and 12 years of supervision of a pain clinic in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Leuven University. As there are many differences between acute pain - clinical as well as experi mental - on the one hand and chronic pain symptoms on the other, it was felt preferable to limit the scope of this book essentially to chronic and recurrent pain in gynecologic practice. When presented with a complaint of lower abdominal and/or low back pain, the gynecologist should constantly be on the lookout for nongynecologic causes, of which the most frequent will be either gastroenterologic or orthopedic and sometimes urologic. I have been fortunate in obtaining the collaboration of Dr."

During the last decade a multitude of studies concerning the dynamic changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF), cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO2), and intracranial pressure (ICP) in the acute phase after head injury have been published. These studies have been supplemented with studies of cerebral autoregulation, CO2 reactivity and barbiturate reactivity. Other investigations include studies of cerebrospinal fluid pH, bicarbonate, lactate and pyruvate. In this book experimental and clinical studies of the dynamic changes in CBF, CMRO2, CO2 reactivity and barbiturate reactivity are reviewed. The author's own clinical studies of the dynamic changes in CBF and cerebral metabolism are summarized and discussed, and the therapeutical implication as regards the use of artificial hyperventilation, sedation with barbiturate and mannitol treatment are discussed.

Concise, recent data are presented on obstetric problems arising in patients with cardiovascular diseases (not only congenital and acquired valvular heart diseases and hypertension, but also uncommon heart lesions) and on cardiological complications encountered in pregnant women. The goal of the book is to provide obstetricians with necessary cardiological information and cardiologists with essential obstetric information to enable both specialists to make optimal decisions regarding the permissibility of pregnancy, management of pregnancy and labour, or termination of pregnancy, and selection of an adequate form of contraception in women with heart and vascular diseases. Along with recent scientific findings, the book contains practical recommendations for examination diagnosis and treatment that is effective for the mother and safe for the fetus.

This atlas offers a collection of EEG spectral analyses and their corresponding conventional recordings under anes thesio10gical procedures. The EEGs presented here were re corded on general surgical and gynecological patients during the last few years. Premedication, induction and maintenance of anesthesia, recovery the immediate postoperative period, and intensive care are covered. Techniques for operating the necessary equipment and artefacts relevant to the routine clinical use of EEG are briefly outlined. Typical examples of characteristic EEGs are presented at the beginning of each chapter, followed by illustrations of deviations from the norm showing the great variety of anesthesiologically induced changes of cerebral function. The description of each EEG course is assessed in relation to clinical parameters. Sometimes no satisfactory interpreta tion can be made, because many physiological and patho physiological causes of alterations in cerebral function are unknown. Time and again it proves impossible to estimate wether deviations from the norm have their origin in cerebral changes or are secondary to extracerebra1 disturbances. The atlas comprises a complete survey in itself, but it can also be seen as a supplement to the book The Electroenceph alogram in Anesthesia by I. Pich1mayr, U. Lips, and H. Kunkel (Springer, 1983), in which detailed lists of references are quoted that are omitted here."

Assisted Circulation 4 is an authoritative review of the progress which has been achieved in the last 5 years since the publication of "Assisted Circulation 3" in 1989. The present book highlights the work of well-known experts on indications for assisted circulation, cardiac support devices such as bridges, devices for transplantation, devices for chronic mechanical support, biological energy sources, cardiomyoplasty, extracorporeal membraneoxygenation and an overview of cardiac devices support with a specific emphasis on xenotransplantation. Assisted Circulation 4 is the latest product of an ongoing effort by the editors to keep readers regularly informed of recent developments in the field. Assisted Circulation is a standard technology in cardiac surgery and especially in cardiac transplantation.

This volume on the processes of transformation of mechanical stimuli into electrical activity in various mechanoreceptors comprises the authors investigations as well as relevant literature data. It deals mainly with initial electrical processes from stimulus of the mechanoreceptor to receptor potential. For the first time the connection between passive and active ion transport and the generation of electrical potentials is considered in detail. Furthermore, data on the properties and selectivity of different types of mechanosensitive ion channels, as well as results of morphological experiments on characteristics of the mechanosensitive membrane, and the changes during the activation of primary and secondary mechanoreceptors are discussed. This comprehensive overview is of interest to molecularbiologists, neuroscientists and biophysists.

Neurological, neurovegetative, and psychic changes following surgery or in tensive care indicate alterations in cerebral function. When these changes are analyzed exactly, they are found to be by no means rare; at the same time, they present a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations. While optimal circulatory monitoring - including continuous EEG recording during anes thesia or intensive care - is today regarded as routine, the problem of objec tive and continuous monitoring of cerebral function under various forms of anesthesia, surgery, and intensive care has not been solved. Considerable improvements in clinical neurophysiology, mainly through visual and spectral analytic evaluations of the EEG, show func tional neurophysiological changes to be equivalent to, or the cause of, clinical, neurological, and psychic changes. The question of current interest, therefore, is whether anesthesiological EEG monitoring is able, both theo retically and practically, to detect and adequately interpret cerebral altera tions following perioperative measures such that these alterations can be treated or avoided accordingly. In the long run, the basic questions are to what extent can anesthesiological measures be guided by the EEG pattern and managed effectively, and can EEG analysis be significant both for the individual patient and in the general interpretation of the effect of anes thesiological procedures? Questions of the relevance and practicability of anesthesiological EEG monitoring are dealt with in this book. This study is based on an analysis of more than 1500 EEGs of patients who underwent anesthesia during surgery."

This book records the presentations given at a workshop held in Bonn in May 1994. The aim of the meeting was to bring together scientists from various disciplines and clinicians to discuss within a group of experts the theoretical, medical, engineering, and regulatory aspects of automated control of therapeutic interventions in. anaesthesiology. The meeting was considered a continuation of a preceding work shop on "Quantitation, Modelling and Control in Anaesthesia" 1], which was held also in Bonn 10 years ago in May 1984. That workshop dealt with problems of how to quantitate concepts like anaesthetic depth, how to model anaesthetic drug disposition, how to link phar macokinetics and pharmacodynamics, and how to use such concepts for the control of anaesthetic drug delivery. With respect to these topics the current proceedings have simultaneously both a broadened and a narrowed perspective. It is broadened in so far as the topics of the workshop did not focus exclusively on anaesthetic drugs and the control of their delivery, but did also discuss anaesthesia machine monitoring and patients therapeutic monitoring as well as control of blood pressure and artificial ventilation. The proceedings have nar rowed the perspective insofar as they do not intensively discuss the processes of quantitation and modelling but presuppose them and give more room to control, especially automated control. During the past 10 years informatics has tremendously expanded its knowledge and methods applicable to control problems."

This supplement of Acta Neurochirurgica contains the proceedings of the Ninth Convention of the Academia Eurasiana Neurochirurgica held in Chateau St. Gerlach, Houthem, The Netherlands, 29 July - 1 August 1998. During this convention a three-day symposium on Neurosurgery and Medical Ethics was held. In this time of tremendous technical advancement in medicine in general and neurosurgery in particular, we are liable to lose sight of the sick patient as a human being, and the odds are that he will be the object rather than the subject of our action in the near future. It is a purpose and a task of the Academia Eurasiana Neurochirurgica to recognize this thread and to pay attention to tradition, morality and ethics in neurological surgery. The theme of this convention and the subject of the symposium met this purpose as no other. In the scientific sessions during the first day, the moral backgrounds of medical ethics in the most important cultures and religions in east and west were elucidated by invited experts in this field. A mutual respectful understanding of each other's conception of and belief in ethical principles is a growing necessity in our multicultural societies in both continents. On the second day, the ethical aspects of different fields of neurological surgery were discussed by members of the Academia. In this context, also the internationally much-discussed and much-criticized regulations on euthanasia in The Netherlands were explained.

Following an introduction to the philosophical and theoreti- cal background of traditional Chinese medicine, the dia- gnostic system is presented: the Chinese system of channels and functional organs, the significance of pointsand point categories, methods of needling and moxibustion. There is a chapter on treatment based on western diagnosis.

C. Manni The focusing of general interest and of many disciplines on disaster medicine is an interesting and recent phenomenon in our society. Disasters have by now left the his torical and philosophical sphere and finally entered the operational arena. Modern man, in other words, no longer accepts disasters in a passive and fatalistic manner, but claims to be able to control them like so many other forces of nature. The new approach is aimed at preventing, containing, and remedying the invariably tragic consequences of these events. The role of medicine in this context is of fundamental importance and is charac terized by two main aspects: application of techniques of intervention appropriately and effectively, and collaboration with the general organization, assuming responsi bility for the protection of health and the treatment of injuries. Following a period of more or less chaotic growth, during which sectionalism and empirical interests prevailed, and localized aspects of this new discipline underwent considerable development, a need is now felt to propose and realize a more com prehensive scientific approach. It has become necessary to identify and to rationally analyze the individual components of this branch of medicine. As in any analysis, the recognition of the "object" of the research is of fundamental importance: hence the title of this first round table: "Types and Events of Disaster."

In January 1980, the First Symposium on the Measurement of Tis sue Oxygen Pressure in Patients was held in Frankfurt. After a 4-year "rest period," the organizers of the 1984 symposium, Profes sor R. Huch of Zurich and Dr. J. Hauss of Munster, together with myself, extended another invitation to come to Frankfurt to find out what had gone on in the field of oxygen pressure measurement and its application in clinical medicine. As the following presentations will show, the application of oxygen pressure measurements has been broadened considerably. Furthermore, technological advances have been made, particularly with the increased use of computers. For various reasons, including technical ones, these methods have not been adapted as widely as one would want. Although con gresses on tissue oxygen pressure have been held in the last few years, the clinical aspect of tissue P0 measurement has not been 2 dealt with in such a concentrated and comprehensive way since 1980. It therefore seemed necessary to hold such a symposium, not only for scientific reasons, but also to enable a larger group of clini cians to gain insight into the importance of the possibilities these methods offer."

Sepsis and Innovative Treatment: The Odyssey R. C. Bone The Odyssey by Homer, dates back to the 8th century, B. C. [1]. It is a great epic adventure of Odysseus's dramatic journey from Troy back home to Ithaca. Odysseus survives the ordeals of this journey and returns with new powers and insights. The study of the pathogenesis and treatment of sepsis has also been an odys- sey. I feel we will return from this odyssey with new insights and treatments. However, as with Odysseus, this will occur only after considerable struggle. In the 1980s we had a rather simplistic view of sepsis. It was a highly lethal complication caused by infection and often charac- terized by shock and multi-organ failure. Our knowledge of the inflammatory responses associated with sepsis was embryonic compared to today. The inflammatory response was often treat- ment with mega-dose corticosteroids along with fluid resuscita- tion, vasopressors and antibiotics. Because of the paucity of mul- ti-center controlled trials documenting the risk/benefit ratio of the treatment of sepsis with corticosteroids, two large multi-cen- ter controlled trials were organized to evaluate the role of corti- costeroids in sepsis [2, 3]. Because animal models showed bene- fits of corticosteroids only with pre-treatment or early treatment, a definition of sepsis was used that did not require positive cul- ture documentation or septic shock to be included in the studied population.

It gives me great pleasure to have this opportunity to write a Foreword for this new book. In the past two decades we have witnessed very significant advances in the management of the very ill patient. The great success in this field of medical endeavour is largely due to the establishment of intensive care units, but a great deal of progress can also be attributed to the major developments in technology, which affect patient management and care as well as the many sophisticated techniques of diagnosis and patient monitoring. Imaging and Labelling Techniques in the Critically III covers this new important and difficult field of diagnosis and visual monitoring. By establishing the criteria and algorhythms for the choice of the different methods available for this purpose, defining the diagnostic signs on images and resolving some of the mis conceptions and pitfalls, this book will go a long way to help the reader, particularly those involved in the care of patients in the intensive care units. This book brings together many different methods of investigation and discusses the advantages and limitations of these techniques in different clinical circumstances. Some of the techniques are well established and their usefulness in the intensive care unit is in no doubt. Some of the newer techniques such as PET scanning or NMR imaging have not yet found a defined position of usage in the critically ill patient. There is, however, little doubt that in due course this situation will change.

This book concentrates on problems generated by acute care in severely traumatized patients during the first 24 hours after injury. During this hectic period, highly complicated problems have to be solved at the site of the accident, during transport to hospital, and in hospital. Multiple medical and paramedical disciplines are involved in providing care to the severely injured. This book endeavors to present a problem-oriented approach to the diagnostic, therapeutic, and organizational aspects that may be encountered.

Before the late 1970s, interest in caffeine among both the general public and the scientific community was at a relatively low level for many years, even though it was recognized that caffeine was an al most universal component of the diet. The National Coffee Associa tion was supporting a continuing program of research, some re search was being conducted by a few of the largest companies selling coffee, and an occasional university researcher became inter ested in caffeine and conducted experiments, often on effects of caf feine in very high concentration in vitro on skeletal muscle fibres or on dividing cells. Since 1978, however, there has been a mighty up surge in both public and scientific interest in caffeine. It is interest ing to note that this was prompted not by discovery of hitherto un known effects or hazards of caffeine, but by the actions of a regulatory agency, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) of the U. S. Public Health Service. The U. S. Congress passed new laws on foods and drugs in 1958. One of the provisions was for testing of food additives to assess risk to health. As it was clearly impracticable to require immediate test ing of all additives already in use, a list was drawn up of some hun dreds of additives that were generally recognized as safe (GRAS)."

The decisive factor in trauma is that many processes first occur at the cellular level before they can be determined in laboratory tests, and recognition of them has only recently found its way into intensive care practice. Yet knowledge of the pathophysiology of these processes is essential for an early diagnosis of multiple organ failure and the implementation of adequate therapy, which ultimately make the patient's survival possible. Professor Schlag, an internationally renowned scientist and clinician, has been concerned with the basic pathophysiological principles of shock for many years. In this book he has brought together for the first time an international team of authors primarily from the USA and Europe, who present their collective findings of trauma, shock, development of the organ in shock and early failure and of sepsis-like syndrome, and development of septic multiple organ failure. Patienten mit Multiorganversagen haben immer noch eine schlechte Prognose in der intensivmedizinischen Behandlung, insbesondere wenn sie noch zusatzlich in einen septischen Schock geraten. Hier hilft auch oft eine breite Abdeckung mit modernsten Antibiotika nicht weiter. Neue Ansatze fur eine Therapie dieser problempatienten haben sich in den letzten Jahren durch Erkenntnisse der pathophysiologischeen Vorgange die zum Schock fuhren ergeben. Herr Professor Schlag hat als anerkannte Kapazitat auf dem Gebiet der Traumatologie und Schockforschung fur dieses erste umfassende Werk zu den Grundlagen des Multiorganversagens eine beeindruckende Liste von mehr als 50 international renommierten Autoren zusammenbekommen. Das Buch ist nicht nur eine Aufarbeitung aller Grundlagen des Schocks und Multiorganversagens sondern zudem ein ausgezeichnetes Nachschlagewerk fur jeden intensivmedizinisch tatigen Klinikarzt, egal ob er aus der Anasthesie, der Inneren Medizin oder der Unfallchirurgie kommt."

Local anesthetics are among the most widely used drugs. Their development over the past century ranges from a documented influence on Freud's Interpretation of Dreams 1 to the synthesis of the ubiquitously popular lidocaine, as described in Chapter 1. For surgical procedures the use of regional, epidural and intrathecal local anesthesia has increased continuously during the past decade. Local anesthetics are also applied by physicians to ameliorate unpleasant sensations and reactions to other procedures, such as tracheal intubation. The presence or the threat of cardiac arrhythmias is often countered by chronic administration oflocal anesthetic-like agents, such as lidocaine or procainamide. Relief of acute pain, accompanying dental manipulations, for example, and of chronic pain are also accomplished with traditional local anesthetics. And over-the-counter formula tions of topical local anesthetics provide practitioners of solar indiscretion welcome relief from their otherwise unaccommodating sunburn. In all these applications the final effect of the local anesthetic is an inhibition of electrical activity, accomplished as a reduction or total blockade of action potentials. The primary site of action is the sodium channel, a transmembrane protein which is essential for the influx of sodium ions that subserves impulse generation and propagation in nerves, skeletal muscle, and heart. The detailed mechanisms oflocal anesthetic action are still being investigated and Chapter 2 of this volume provides a current overview of that subject."

Sepsis and infection are the major enemies of the intensive care patient in whom immunological defenses are severely impaired. This major problem is thefocus of attention in this book, based on the presentation of the First International Congress on the Immune Consequences of Trauma, Shock, and Sepsis, which is one of the first attempts to exchange ideas on the state-of-the-art in this area of immunology. Both basic and clinical research, including new centres of attention, are described. The growing role of immunology in medicine opens new avenues to the under- standing of trauma and sepsis and will allow the design of novel therapeutic approaches.

Every specialist, at present, is confronted with the fact that it is continually becoming more difficult to remain 'up to date'. The areas in which he must read are expanding while the individual publications are becoming greater in number, larger in content and appear more frequently. The choice of the subject was not easy. This time we have selected the pharmacological aspects of anaesthesiology as our main topic, as a continu ation of the Boerhaave course in 1971. Although we know that a drug works, the mechanism behind this action is of great importance. The pharmacokinetics and side effects of the drugs we administer affect not only our patients, but also ourselves, our children, and the personnel under our care. In a special section we draw attention to this subject. We fervently hope that this symposium will further enrich your knowledge of anaesthesia and that through this enrichment you will derive more pleasure from the profession you have chosen and that in the end this will lead to even better care and treatment of the patients entrusted to us. We wish to express our thanks to Prof. C. M. Conway, Dr. D. T. Popescu, and Prof. D. M. E. Vermeulen-Cranch for their assistance in the editing of some of the chapters in this book."

Successful pain management is key to patient quality of life and outcomes across many fields of medicine. The Handbook of Pain Management provides an insightful and comprehensive summary, authored by a noted expert.

Concise and insightful review of an important and complicated area of medicine