Morgan and Mikhail’s Clinical Anesthesiology (5th edition)

Book Preface

Authors should be proud whenever a book is sufficiently successful to require a new edition. Th is is especially true when a book’s consistent popularity over time leads to the succession of the original authors by a new set of authors. Th is latter circumstance is the case for the fi ft h edition of what most of us call “Morgan and Mikhail.” We hope that you the reader will fi nd this new edition as readable and useful as you have found the preceding four editions of the work.

This fifth edition, while retaining essential elements of its predecessors, represents a significant revision of the text. Only those who have written abook of this size and complexity will understand just how much effort was involved. Entirely new subjects (eg, Perioperative Pain Management and Enhanced Outcomes) have been added, and many other topics that previously lived in multiple chapters have been moved and consolidated. We have tried to eliminate redundancies and contradictions. The number of illustrations devoted to regional anesthesia and analgesia has been greatly increased to adequately address the rapidly growing importance of this perioperative management topic. The clarity of the illustrations is also enhanced by the widespread use of color throughout the book. We hope the product of this endeavor provides readers with as useful an exercise as was experienced by the authors in composing it.

• Key Concepts are listed at the beginning of each chapter and a corresponding numbered icon identifi es the section(s) within the
chapter in which each concept is discussed. Th ese should help the reader focus on important concepts that underlie the core of anesthesiology.
• Case Discussions deal with clinical problems of current interest and are intended to stimulate discussion and critical thinking.
• The suggested reading has been revised and updated to include pertinent Web addresses and references to clinical practice guidelines and practice parameters. We have not tried to provide a comprehensive list of references: we expect that most readers of this text would normally perform their own literature searches on medical topics using Google, PubMed, and other electronic resources. Indeed, we expect that an ever-increasing segment of our readers will access this text in one of its several electronic forms.
• Multiple new illustrations and images have been added to this edition. Nonetheless, our goal remains the same as that of the first edition: “to provide a concise, consistent presentation of the basic principles essential to the modern practice of anesthesia.” We would like to thank Brian Belval, Harriet Lebowitz, and Marsha Loeb for their invaluable assistance.

Despite our best intentions, various errors may have made their way into the fifth edition. We will be grateful to readers who report these to us at [email protected] so that we can correct them in reprints and future editions.

John F. Butterworth IV, MD
David C. Mackey, MD
John D. Wasnick, MD, MPH