This welcome addition to the series Update in Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine emerges from the most recent of a series of meetings organized by Alvar Net and Salvador Benito of Barcelona. This gathering provided a forum for European intensive care specialists to exchange ideas, knowledge and experience on, the measurements feasible in mechanically ventilated patients. The scope was ambitious, ranging from basics like the measurement of airway pressure and blood gases to topics such as CT, MRI and the multiple inert gas elimination technique. The success of the meeting made publication a logical consequence. The book is unique in its breadth. The contributors, from numerous centers in Europe and North America, cover all tech­ niques employed in intensive care units, describing indications, contraindications, procedures, biases and complications. This volume will be an invaluable source for intensive care specialists and other clinicians. Alongside practical descriptions of procedures they employ routinely (spirometry, measurement of sys­ temic vascular oxygen pressure, Swan-Ganz catheterization, BOPA etc.), they will find accounts of such sophisticated techniques as on­ line measurement offunctional residual capacity, isotope determina­ tion of ventilation/perfusion ratios, diaphragmatic metabolism and peripheral oxygen exchange. I am especially happy to see the book published by Springer-Verlag, which has distinguished itself in the field of intensive care medicine.

Inhalt

with Special Reference to Ventilator-associated Barotrauma.- Pneumotachographic Recording of Ventilatory Pattern.- Spirometry.- Inspiratory Occluded Airway Pressure.- Transdiaphragmatic Pressure.- Assessment of the Breathing Workload During Mechanical Ventilation.- Assessment of Diaphragmatic Function.- Pulmonary Compliance.- Respiratory Impedance.- Elastance and Resistance of Respiratory System.- Respiratory Inductive Plethysmography.- Closing Volume.- Functional Residual Capacity in Acute Respiratory Failure. Methods of Measurement in the Ventilated Patients and Their Clinical Utility.- FRC and Efficiency of Gas Mixing in the Lung. SF6.- Determination of Lung-Ventilation and Perfusion by Isotope Technique.- Multiple Inert Gas Elimination Technique.- Pulmonary Diffusion Capacity.- Blood Gases.- Pulse Oximetry in the Intensive Therapy Unit.- Transcutaneous Monitoring of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide.- Mixed Venous Oxygen Saturation Monitoring in Mechanically Ventilated Patients.- Capnography.- Measurement of Oxygen Consumption and Carbon Dioxide Production in Artificially Ventilated Patients.- Bronchoalveolar Lavage.- Measurement of Extrapulmonary Lung Water.- Interactions Between Convective and Diffusive Components of O2 Transport to the Tissues.- Energy Metabolism and Diaphragmatic Function: Applications of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy.- The Oxygen Consumption of the Respiratory Muscles.- Clinical Applications of Balloon Occlusion Pulmonary Angiography (BOPA).- Computerized Axial Tomography of the Lung During Acute Respiratory Failure.