Expert clinicians comprehensively review the endocrine and metabolic responses to critical illness, explore the mechanisms and outcomes (positive and negative) of those responses to severe stress, and consider possible endocrine interactions that are not yet fully defined. The contributors explain in detail the endocrine response to a multitude of critical illnesses, including cancer, liver failure, renal failure, trauma, burns, AIDS and other infections, starvation, cardiac disease, pulmonary disease, and organ transplants. The book offers significant basic knowledge of high clinical relevance by collating and defining the numerous interactions of the endocrine system and critical disease states, by discussing the basic pathophysiological processes involved, and by reviewing the clinical relevance of such responses.