Mechanical ventilation is a cornerstone of the treatment of critically ill patients, as also dramatically underlined by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The topic is not simple to approach, since it requires integration of multiple data which, in turn, result from complex interplays between patient's condition and ventilatory settings. While technological development empowered advanced monitoring and decision support, these also increase the burden of data on the practitioners.

Furthermore, considering that sometimes mechanical ventilation is seen under two, apparently opposite, approaches, 'physiology vs. protocols', the book aims to reconcile these two aspects. And this has been done by each author following the above trajectory in their chapters.

Dr. Giacomo Bellani is Associate Professor of Anesthesia and Critical Care Medicine of the University of Milan-Bicocca, in Monza, Italy and staff physician in the general Intensive Care Unit of San Gerardo Hospital, where he completed the postgraduate training program in Anesthesia and Critical Care. In 2003-2004 he was research fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, MA. In 2006 he received the ESICM' Young investigator award'. In 2010 he acquired a PhD in Biomedical technology at UNIMIB. Research has always been complementary to his clinical activities. His research is largely focused on ARDS and mechanical ventilation monitoring. From October 2015 to October 2018 he was chairman of the Acute Respiratory Failure Section of ESICM. He is co-PI of the LUNG SAFE study (main manuscript published in 2016 on JAMA). He has participated to organization of several meetings and courses on mechanical ventilation.  He authored about 170 peer-reviewed papers, mainly focused on invasive and non-invasive ventilation, 10 book chapters, two patents delivering about 120 invited talks. He is co-founder and president of Reviewer Credits, co-founder of DICO Technologies.