This volume presents the work of a group of international experts in neurocritical care. This book provides the physician with a quick and practical tool for consultation and it’s dedicated to brain-injured and neurocritically ill patients and provides the physician with a quick and practical tool for consultation. The management of these patients constitutes a growing subspecialty that remains unrecognized by many international medical associations but has played a prominent role in intensive care over the last two decades. Neurocritical care as a subspecialty evolved from the need to provide highly specialized care to neurosurgical patients. Later, patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), hemorrhagic stroke, and acute central nervous system disorders were included in this line of care. Each of these patients requires specialists who are knowledgeable of their particular clinical situations in addition to rapid and often complex management of intracranial hypertension, technical equipment, and skilled nurses.
This book arrives in an era of electronic information sharing, and in the field of neuroscience, one of the fastest moving. If completeness was the aim, the book will look as a library, and would become outdated tomorrow. But the aim is to be of practical use, and to assist the clinical practice of the busy physician. Then clarity and synthesis have been the priority, rather than academic perfection. The intelligent reader will find what is necessary for starting, rather than finishing, his approach to neurointensive care. If this book will reinforce interest and curiosity, suggesting further reading and research, it will have accomplished a valuable goal.