Expert clinicians comprehensively review the endocrine and metabolic responses to critical illness, explore the mechanisms and outcomes (positive and negative) of those responses to severe stress, and consider possible endocrine interactions that are not yet fully defined. The contributors explain in detail the endocrine response to a multitude of critical illnesses, including cancer, liver failure, renal failure, trauma, burns, AIDS and other infections, starvation, cardiac disease, pulmonary disease, and organ transplants. The book offers significant basic knowledge of high clinical relevance by collating and defining the numerous interactions of the endocrine system and critical disease states, by discussing the basic pathophysiological processes involved, and by reviewing the clinical relevance of such responses.

Inhalt
1 General Adaptation Syndrome: An Overview.- 2 Developmental Considerations: The Fetal and Neonatal Endocrine Response to Stress.- 3 Growth, Development, and Critical Disease.- 4 Pituitary Response to Stress: Growth Hormone and Prolactin.- 5 The Sympathoadrenomedullary Response to Critical Illness.- 6 The Adrenocortical Response to Critical Illness: The CRHACTHCortisol Axis.- 7 Adrenocortical Response to Critical Illness: The ReninAldosterone Axis.- 8 Thyroid Response to Critical Illness.- 9 Pathophysiology of Water Metabolism During Critical Illness.- 10 Alterations in Fuel Metabolism in Critical Illness: Hyperglycemia.- 11 Alterations in Fuel Metabolism in Critical Illness: Hypoglycemia.- 12 Critical Illness and Calcium Metabolism.- 13 Skeletal Metabolism in Critical Illness.- 14 Testicular Function in Critical Illness.- 15 The Female Gonadal Response to Critical Disease.- 16 Effects of Aging on the Hormonal Response to Stress.