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From the respirator arose intensivists. These machines, which are the clan symbol of intensivists, are familiar to most surgeons only fleetingly during their residency. This book, written by an intensivist and a respiratory medical internist from Emory University, Atlanta, is designed to provide the rudiments of respiratory care in the intensive care unit to students, residents, and fledgling anesthesiologists and intensivists. Starting with basic respiratory physiology, it proceeds in gentle increments through discussions of various types of acute respiratory failure, their monitoring, and their management. But the soul of the book concerns the management of mechanical respirators. There is only a short 18-page chapter discussing the pharmacology of cardiorespiratory drugs.
The pullulating of intensivists as a specialty has been celebrated by numerous respiratory care manuals varying in sophistication from little more than how-to brochures accompanying the various types of mechanical respirators to weighty volumes of the utmost basic science sophistication.