Preface

Mechanical ventilation, ventilator management, and weaning from mechanical ventilation vary based on location within the hospital, the type of lung injury, and the medical condition of the patient. Understanding the types of lung injury and various methods of achieving ventilation expand the armamentarium of a practitioner and allow for the best management decisions to be made.

This book is a reference tool for the most up-to-date information on critical-care ventilation. It begins with the use of a high-flow nasal cannula (HFNC) and a detailed description of the advanced modes of ventilation. Once the types of ventilation are understood, they will then be applied to the ventilation approaches in different populations of patients: the trauma patients, the obese patients, and the patients under neurocritical care.

The final chapters contain a discussion of the mechanisms on how to wean from mechanical ventilation, how certain medical conditions affect the weaning process, and finally the approach to palliative withdrawal of mechanical ventilation.

This book is intended to give the reader a comprehensive overview of mechanical ventilation in the intensive-care unit and operating-room settings based on the most recent literature.

> **Jessica Lovich-Sapola, MD, MBA, FASA, Jonathan Alter, MD and Maureen Harders, MD** MetroHealth Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
