A review series on the management of burns injury

Abstract

In the southern hemisphere winter of 2019, the editors of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care (A&IC) discussed and agreed upon the idea of reintroducing theme issues containing a series of reviews and perhaps other articles on particular subjects that may be of interest to our readership. This is not a novel concept for A&IC or other journals. Indeed, the very first volume of A&IC featured a symposium issue on paediatric anaesthesia and intensive care (Vol. 1, No. 6, Nov. 1973) with Kester Brown appointed by Ben Barry as ‘Special Editor’. We further decided that our theme-issue reintroduction would commence with an issue highlighting the surgical, anaesthetic, intensive care and pain management of burns injury. At the time, neither we nor the authors commissioned to undertake the reviews could have had any idea what burn-related challenges the summer of 2019–2020 would bring to the nations of Australia and New Zealand. Nor could we have known the extent to which some of our contributors were to become directly involved in the response to those challenges.