Along with trauma, burns, and surgical critical care, emergency general surgery is an essential and core clinical component of Acute Care Surgery. Emergency general surgery involves taking care of patients with surgical disease presenting to the emergency department as well as inpatient consults and surgical emergencies referred from other specialists. The acute care surgeon must be prepared to care for a wide range of emergency general surgery disease processes at a moment's notice, and this text presents the practical clinical information necessary to care for this complex and critically ill patient population. This text covers emergency general surgery topics in a succinct, practical, understandable fashion. After reviewing the general principles in caring for the emergency general surgery patient this text proceeds to review the current evidence and best practices stratified by organ system including esophageal, gastroduodenal, hepatobiliary and pancreatic, small and large bowel, anorectal, thoracic, and hernias. In addition, there is a special section on how to best manage unique and complex emergency general surgery patients including the obese, elderly, pregnant, cirrhotic, and immunocompromised. Chapters in this text will present a logical, straightforward, and easy to understand approach to the emergency general surgery patient as well as provide patient care algorithms where appropriate.

Carlos V.R. Brown Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX USAKenji Inaba LA County/University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA USAMatthew J. Martin Madigan Army Medical Center Tacoma, WA USAAli Salim Brigham and Women's Hospital Boston, MA USA