Martin Dauber, MD(University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine)

This is a practical guide to providing anesthesia for emergent and urgent surgical procedures. It is not limited to anesthesia for trauma, including almost all of the surgical emergencies that an anesthetist might encounter.

Combined, the editors have almost a century of clinical anesthesia experience in India. They assemble this wealth of emergency clinical cases and organize the presentation of facts by organ system and body region. In the past, this topic was covered as part of the relevant subspecialty books. These authors first clearly define, then approach the emergent/urgent situation as a study in and of itself. They have successfully developed a practical guide.

This book is designed for both trainees and practicing anesthetists, especially those wishing or needing more understanding of the imperatives that drive demands for emergency anesthesia. The book may be too basic for skilled practitioners in general, but there are certainly areas that have more appeal to those already in practice, such as the ones describing application of new procedures that may involve anesthesiologists (GI endoscopy, disaster management, etc.).

Several introductory chapters give a basic review of definitions followed by a brief discussion of pharmacology of anesthetics (which could have been left out). Sections devoted to cardiac, general surgery, obstetric, neonatal, ENT, ophthalmic, and neurosurgical emergencies follow. Some of these chapters have deficiencies (e.g. the ophthalmic chapter quotes decades-old studies and the neurosurgical chapter is too superficial). However, the final chapters covering trauma and miscellaneous issues are generally excellent, especially the ones on spinal cord injury.

This book sets out to provide a practical approach and it succeeds in its mission. It is not meant to be an all-inclusive treatise, despite its 600 pages. For trainees and early-career practitioners, it could serve as a quick read while waiting for the emergency case to arrive in the OR