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The idea of writing this book was born in early 2016; we knew that the road would be bumpy yet exciting! We are thrilled to introduce the first edition of our manual to assist health care providers in managing our very unique patients with various hardware devices. These “hi‐tech” devices help our patients breathe, walk, hear, and do a host of other essential activities of daily living. Importantly, when these patients seek emergency care due to device malfunction, infections, or other complications, it is crucial that the medical provider know how to manage both the patient and the device.

It is often challenging for the emergency/critical care clinician to troubleshoot and, sometimes, even identify the problems with many of these hi‐tech devices. Moreover, specialized consultation is not always readily available. It is quite challenging for providers to recall complex diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms for patients with specialized equipment, thus increasing the risk for morbidity and mortality. This guide provides a stepwise approach to acute presentations of patients with clinical hardware, focusing on specific instructions for initial evaluation and management. Our intent is that this endeavor will assist health care providers in both community settings and academic centers in the treatment of complex patients with “hi‐tech” equipment.

It is our sincere hope that this book will improve the quality of care to our unique patient population who utilize specialized hardware. Our goal is to provide our readers with an overview of the basic approach to clinical scenarios of device malfunction and related complications of the most commonly used medical devices. However, as it was impossible to include all devices in this book, the practitioner should make every effort to ensure they have the most accurate information for each patient's hardware.

We want to thank our fellow editors, authors, and contributors, who gave their time selflessly so that we could produce this book. Also, we would like to thank our teachers, mentors, and colleagues, from whom we learn every day. Most importantly, the real source of our inspiration, our patients and their families, deserve our eternal heartfelt gratitude.

Ioannis and Nick