These Annual Symposia continue a tradition of four days of intensive didactic teaching preceded by one-day optional pre-courses on practical skills and organizational options for management of the acutely life-threatened patient. The program provides a highly respected state-of-the-art update to help health care professionals keep pace with rapid changes in the knowledge base, advances in technology, updated guidelines for management of the patient and addresses administrative and ethical strategies with which to optimize care of the critically ill and injured. As the first and still the largest university postgraduate course on acute care taught by internationally renowned experts, our focus is on clinical management of the life-threatened patient at the bedside. The large menu of presentations is applicable to the practices of critical care specialists, emergency physicians, hospitalists, anesthesiologists, cardiologists, pulmonary physicians, infectious disease specialists, nephrologists, traumatologists and general surgeons as well as primary care providers  in smaller communities and the allied health professionals who support their priorities. The majority of our registrants return yearly or on alternate years.