[Surgical intensive care]

Patients for intensive care in surgery can be divided into 3 groups: 1. Patients in poor preoperative conditions which should be corrected before surgery is performed; 2. Patients with extensive operations and expected or unexpected postoperative complications; 3. Patients with extensive traumas. --In the postwar period medicine developed at a tremendous speed. Modern intensive treatment of those patients with managed by a new group of doctors who had based their primary training in Surgery and continued their professional career in Anaesthesiology. In the last two decades, however, pathophysiologic thinking found its way and a new type of surgeon emerged. Special fields such as cardiovascular-endocrinological-gastroenterological surgery etc, appeared. Nowadays preoperative as well as postoperative treatment is considered to be an important factor in surgery and applied by all specialists. --Anaesthiologists however still play a major role in intensive medicine for surgical patients. But due to the fact that surgical training only plays a little or no part in their professional training, their role is hardly more than that of an important and necessary consultant. A new type of a doctor for surgical intensive medicine may perhaps develop somewhere in the future, but at present successful intensive care in surgical patients can only be achieved by perfect cooperation.