The 2nd edition of this book describes the recent techniques, strategies, and drugs that have been demonstrated by multicenter randomized trials to influence survival in critically ill, defined as those who have acute failure of at least one organ, due to either a pathological condition or a medical intervention, and require intensive care treatment. Each chapter focuses on a specific procedure, device, or drug. The scope is accordingly wide, with coverage of topics as diverse as noninvasive mechanical ventilation, protective ventilation, prone positioning, intravenous salbutamol in ARDS, high-frequency oscillatory ventilation, mild hypothermia after cardiac arrest, daily interruption of sedatives, tranexamic acid, diaspirin cross-linked hemoglobin, albumin, growth hormone, glutamine supplementation, tight glucose control, supranormal oxygen delivery, and hydroxyethyl starch in sepsis. The topics selection was performed with the help of hundreds of specialists from dozens of countries; they expressed via web if they agreed or not with these topics and if they used them in their daily clinical practice. The clear text is supported by 'how to do' sections and 'key point' boxes that provide easily accessible practical information.

Giovanni Landoni is currently Associate Professor at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, where he works as Director Center for Intensive Care and Anesthesiology San Raffaele Scientific Institute. He participated to ideation, writing and implementation of more than 20 grants that got funding from national and international donors. He served as reviewer for over 50 journals (NEJM, JAMA, The Lancet, British Medical Journal, Circulation and Intensive Care Medicine among others) and for foreign grant agencies. Prof Landoni was Chief Investigator in successfully completed multicenter randomized clinical trials that enrolled > 5,000 critically ill or perioperative patients over the last 5 years and were published in the NEJM. He ideated, organized and published the findings of the innovative web based International Consensus Conferences with thousands of participants from over 70 countries.

Rinaldo Bellomo is Director of Intensive Care Research at Austin Health, Director of the Data Analytics Research and Evaluation Centre of the University of Melbourne and of the Centre for Integrated Critical Care at the University of Melbourne and Co-Director of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre (ANZIC-RC). He is Professor of Intensive care with the University of Melbourne and Honorary Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Monash University, and holds further leading academic positions in Australia and overseas. In 2014, Professor Bellomo was named in Thomson Reuters the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014. He has been on the list of most cited investigators in Medicine for the last 7 years.  In 2018 he received the Order of Australia for his contribution to Medicine. Professor Bellomo has published more than 1300 papers, written more than 180 book chapters, and edited 15 books in the field of intensive care medicine. He is Editor-in-Chief of Critical Care and Resuscitation. Over the past 10 years, he has been heavily involved in the design, execution, supervision, and publication of several large randomized controlled trials published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet and JAMA.