A status report of CCM in different countries varies considerably. In the USA, resuscitation and intensive care were pioneered by anesthesiologists in the 1950s, but CCM evolved later as a multidisciplinary movement through the initiative of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) starting in 1970. Recently, CCM has been introduced as a subspecialty of anesthesiology, internal medicine, pediatrics, and surgery. Australia has already, for a couple of years, had a primary specialty of intensive therapy, but there are two tracks, one in medicine and one in anesthesiology. In the Scandinavian countries, as well as in Italy, CCM is an integral part of anesthesiology, since intensive care was initiated there in the early 1950s by anesthesiologists. In several Ibero-Latin American nations, we find a primary specialty in intensive therapy.