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."

The development of accurate hormonal assays in recent years has evoked much interest in the area of anaesthesia and surgery. In an effort to allow an exchange of ideas and new information in this area, the First International Symposium on Endocrinology in Anaesthesia and Surgery was held in Bonn during September 1978. The contents of this book represent much of the information presented by the leading authorities in this field. The presentations were grouped in three areas: 1. Basic problems of endocrinology in anaesthesia and surgery; 2. The response of the endocrine system to anaesthesia and surgery; 3. Hormone and anaesthetic management of endocrine disease. As with any multi-authored text, there is both repetition and diversity but hopefully the reader will be able to obtain much of the useful information. As Editors, we wish to express our deep appreciation to Profes sor R. Frey and Springer-Verlag for including this book in the series on "Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine." H. Stoeckel T. Oyama Table of Contents I. Basic Problems of Endocrinology in Anaesthesia and Surgery H. Breuer Basic Principles Regulating the Endocrine System . . . . . . . .. 3 G. Wesemann and E. Grote Pathophysiology of Intra- and Postoperative Stress .. . . . . .. 10 M. Trede Surgical Treatment of Endocrine Disorders .. . . . . . . . . . .. 24 T. Oyama Influence of Anaesthesia on the Endocrine System ... . . . .. 39 L. Nocke-Finck Radioimmunological Determination of Hormones."