Every year, more than two million new papers are published in scientific medical journals. To keep updated even in a small field or speciality takes an ever-increasing amount of time. The main purpose of evidence-based medicine (EBM) is to aid busy clinicians in making decisions based on scientific evidence. The goal of EBM is to produce systematic reviews and clinical guidelines that summarise scientific knowledge about a topic in a single publication that preferably is updated regularly.

So why should you read (and buy) this book? Because today's clinical anaesthesiologists are faced with an ever-increasing amount of work and new challenges. We have to handle our patients in both a safe and high-quality manner and at the same time adopt new scientific developments. On top of this, we have to teach our skills to those who will succeed us: the trainees. All in all, time is short and our duties are many.

The aim of this book is to meet the needs of health professionals in anaesthesiology as medicine moves to be evidence-based. Our aim is that this book should be a tool to understand the basic and advanced use of evidence-based methodology. It should integrate the results from research articles into useful, clinically orientated summaries of diagnosis, treatment and patient management in anaesthesiology and critical care medicine.