The second edition of Clinical Intensive Care maintains many of its original features. It is primarily aimed at those practising Intensive Care Medicine at the bedside with practical troubleshooting tables and chapters which distil theory into relevant guidelines for management. While the whole book has been updated to include what we believe are the most important advances in acute medicine, the size of the book has been deliberately kept the same.

Intensive Care Medicine is now a mature specialty practised in every major hospital and the principles of this specialty are now being applied in the management of patients in every part of the hospital. The walls of intensive care units are becoming more virtual as their staff are being asked to consult on the seriously ill both before and after their admission to the intensive care unit. Increasingly the principles of acute medicine are part of the knowledge base of intensive care medicine and are being captured in its journals and textbooks. It seemed appropriate therefore that the title of the book changed to ‘Clinical Intensive Care and Acute Medicine’. The principles of the book can be used by intensive care staff consulting on general wards as well as by other specialists caring for potentially seriously ill patients on general wards.