Acknowledgments

We are happy to be able to acknowledge those to whom we are indebted in the writing of this book. First and foremost we want to thank our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for all his blessings that he has given us through the years. We wish to thank our chairman at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Dr. Edwin Bowe, for fostering and nurturing an environment in our anesthesiology department that allows for academic pursuits. We thank our colleague Dr. Eugene Hessel for his wonderful lectures during our training that sparked our interest in anesthesia equipment, and for reinforcing over the years the importance of knowing your equipment. Besides Dr. Bowe and Dr. Hessel, we are fortunate to have as a colleague Dr. John Eichhorn, whose name will be familiar to most as one of the leading experts on medical safety of his generation. He has answered many questions patiently for us through the years, and has helped us in our academic pursuits. Likewise, Dr. Raeford Brown of our department has been our mentor in our academic pursuits, and has been an enthusiastic supporter of our efforts in this project.

We also thank Dr. Thomas Murphy and Mr. Joseph Lesser, CRNA, members of our departmental equipment committee, for their work in evaluation of new equipment for our department, and for sharing their knowledge with us. Mr. Arthur Eversole is the biomedical technician in our operating rooms and has been a tremendous source of technical information for us over the years. Mr. Charles York has been exceptionally and cheerfully helpful as our staff assistant.

Brian Belval at McGraw-Hill has demonstrated the patience of Job during the production of this work, and we are grateful to him for expressing interest in this project. Christina Thomas of McGraw-Hill kept us on track for deadlines, and we are also grateful to her for her efforts. Sylvia Rebert, project manager, made the editing portion of this endeavor (which is new to us) painless and simple.

Finally, we wish to thank our families; Karen and Chris, and Tracy, Brannon, and Keegan, for bearing with us while we missed too many family dinners, too many soccer games, too many homework sessions, and too much yard work over the years during our medical practice and academic pursuits.