Intensive Care/ Anesthesiology

“Intensive Care/Anesthesiology” is a medical specialty that includes four interrelated but different subspecialties. Anesthesiology includes perioperative medicine and is focused on the pre-, intra- and postoperative treatment of surgical patients. Intensive care is the treatment and care of patients experiencing the failure of one or more organs. Prehospital/emergency medicine is the treatment of acute trauma or emergency medical situations, and pain medicine covers postoperative and non-malignant chronic pain. Chronic pain, however, will be dealt with elsewhere.

The organization of these four medical elements differs between countries, but still forms an entity. Many anesthesiologists specialize in one of these fields but cover one or more of the others as part of their clinical practice. An anesthesiologist is a generalist and needs a broad field of knowledge and a wide range of procedural skills.

The section “Intensive Care/ Anesthesiology” of the journal Medicina is devoted to the propagation of novel findings and state-of-the-art knowledge in the fields of Anesthesia, Perioperative Care, Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine. Its aim is to publish research of excellent quality in order to enable anesthesiologists to give their patients high-quality care.

• anaesthesia
• pre-operative assessment and optimisation
• intra-operative management
• postoperative complications
• airway management
• regional anaesthesia
• paediatric anaesthesia
• acute pain management
• intensive Care
• emergency medicine
• prehospital medicine