Book excerpt: EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT OF THE HI-TECH PATIENT IN ACUTE AND CRITICAL CARE Emergency Management of the Hi-Tech Patient in Acute and Critical Care helps practitioners stabilize and care for pediatric and adult patients who have specialized medical devices such as prosthetic valves, cochlear transplants, insulin pumps, orthopedic hardware, and ventriculoperitoneal (VP) shunts. Using a step-by-step approach to acute presentations of patients with clinical hardware, this concise yet comprehensive guide provides specific instructions for the initial evaluation and management of numerous clinical scenarios including device malfunctions, infections, trauma, surgical complications, and more. Encompassing management of both the patient and the device, the guide enables emergency and critical care clinicians to rapidly make appropriate treatment decisions without the immediate need for extensive research, extended discussions with subspecialists, or recalling complex diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms. Clear, concise, and easy-to-follow chapters—written by a panel of highly experienced experts across specialties—include numerous algorithms, figures, tables, diagrams, and color illustrations and clinical images. An invaluable resource for improving the quality of care for the unique hi-tech patient population, this advanced practical manual: Provides algorithms for the most common clinical scenarios of device malfunction and related complications Covers management of patients who have undergone major operations such as organ transplantation or complex congenital heart disease repair Presents detailed management plans for a wide range of hardware types and medical conditions Offers expert guidance to practitioners in settings where not all specialties are readily available, such as rural and remote areas or community hospitals Features contributions from a team of experts in various areas of adult and pediatric emergency and critical care medicine Emergency Management of the Hi-Tech Patient in Acute and Critical Care is a must-have clinical reference and guide for pediatric and adult emergency medicine physicians, general pediatricians, internists, general practitioners, critical care specialists, and allied health practitioners.